THE WILD: backcountry of Colombia is where the land really comes to life, flooding the senses with shades of green I hadn’t thought possible. In the dusty streets of Bosconia we are physically grabbed by a couple of men and dragged bodily toward a minivan bound for Mompox. We drive for hours through dry countryside until, as the sun is beginning to set, we hit the river. The van rolls onto a ‘car ferry’ – actually three longboats lashed together with a huge steel plate on top – and the whine of a single longboat motor propels us across the river. The clouds are dramatic and frozen, like a Renaissance painting. The red light of the sinking sun reflects off the water.

Across the river the land becomes flooded. A string of houses sit up to their windowsills in water, islands without land access. The lights are still on inside. It’s dark when we roll up to the riverfront in Mompox. Large frogs hop through the mud puddles of the street, and the road is littered with the carcasses of the slow or hesitant. Iguanas are everywhere; they run through our bathroom, across the streets, fall out of trees onto the tables of the cafe outside. Lightning flashes in great sheets in the distance, soundless and magnificent.

We spend the night on the rooftop talking to a young editor from New York. A perfect illustration of the surrealism of travel: she gave up her profitable job and her Williamsburg apartment and now supports herself working for a Colombian internet company whose sole raison d’être is to write gushing love letters to women on internet dating sites on behalf of rich twits who don’t have the time to do it themselves.

In the morning Adam, Erin and I are trailed up the street by a large, slobbering Rottweiler. It follows us through the main square, where a donkey stands rigidly out the front of the cathedral, past longboats being loaded with motorbikes, up into a shoe store and finally into the riverside cafe where we have breakfast. The old lady who runs the restaurant and her two granddaughters try to run the dog off, but it just slobbers away in a friendly manner and then rejoins us.

The two little girls – home from school because rain during the night wiped out the power – lure the dog toward the river and encourage him to jump in, which he does with a splash. But the river is swollen, almost breaking its banks, and very fast – the dog tries helplessly to pull itself out but cannot; its forepaws slap the water impotently and it stares up at us stupidly.

“Abuela, the dog doesn’t know how to swim,” calls the older girl to her grandmother nervously.

“He’ll work it out, cariño,” calls the grandmother without emerging from the house.

At this point the dog is having difficulty keeping its head above water. It’s clearly drowning and Adam and Erin reluctantly reach down into the river and pull the whole huge soaking mess out of the water. By way of thanks, the dog immediately shakes several gallons of water onto Adam’s shirt and pants and trots off.

The day is hot and humid and the entire town is without power until nightfall. Erin and I head out to the cemetery, leaving a trail of sweat on the footpath. It’s a beautiful spot of large white tombstones and walls of graves, some stacked six high, where people unable to afford a burial plot are buried. Many of them are unable to even afford a plaque – the name spelt out in black paint or etched with a knife into the concrete itself.

We eat dinner in the plaza outside the Santo Domingo church again; we’re approached by a prostitute with Down’s Syndrome who touches our shoulders, giggling in attempted flirtatiousness. Another old woman in a ratty dress and bare feet stands near the statue in the middle of the plaza and, as we watch, urinates onto the pavement, just standing there pretending nothing is happening, the hot yellow piss splattering onto her feet.

Next morning we crowd the five of us into a taxi out over the dirt roads that run alongside the river. After nearly an hour we come across a bridge that has been washed out. A makeshift replacement has been formed out of dirt and sandbags but for reasons unknown there is a huge pile of dirt in the middle of it, blocking traffic. At our end of the bridge a large Hitachi excavator has tumbled into the river and sits drowned with its huge shovel reaching up out of the water and clinging to the shore as if to life itself. A couple of young soldiers sit around it clutching machine guns; we chat to them idly while we wait for a solution to present itself. An arepa stand has set up at the base of the bridge, offering hot food to waiting motorists. Fish jump from the water in great schools; the shore is littered with those who jumped too forcefully.

By nightfall we are across the river and on a bus. We wake among the lit-up hills of Medellín, streetlights stretching for miles in the 4am gloom, the gentle strains of tango coming gently over the radio.

Medellín is a huge, bustling city of overcrowded streets that sing with energy, a city by turns invigorating and exhausting. The obese bronze sculptures of artist and favourite son Fernando Botero litter the plazas and galleries; the Zona Rosa is full of expensively-dressed Colombianas and skinny coke peddlers. A man in the middle of a plaza is taking bets on his guinea pig; he has a series of bowls set up in a semi-circle, each with a hole cut out; passersby place bets on which bowl the guinea pig will run into. Most of the time the guinea pig simply runs off through peoples’ legs into the garden. A toothless woman catches my eye and winks at me. “Hey, you!” she shouts in English, followed by a stream of wolf-whistles. I walk away at a quick stride but she follows, swearing in Spanish and whistling and yelling, “I love you tomorrow!”. Across the road is a huge sculpture of an overturned boat, the mass of humanity inside trying to fight their way to the top, where angels are plucking children away to safety.

At night we join an Englishman, Andrew, and head out to the tacky discos of the Zona Rosa. Andrew is a nice guy, very intelligent, but the word used to describe him in all conversations in the days following is ‘sketchy’. He stops to buy a couple of grams of coke from a sniffling teenager and when we sit in a park for a chill, Andrew is snorting lines off of a make-up kit. A young couple make out against a railing. A policeman rides by on a motorbike; somebody thinks they can hear him circling back around. Andrew snaps the makeup kit closed and we half bolt down the street before realizing it is a false alarm. When he reopen the kit, all the coke has soaked into the makeup pad. He snorts it off there anyway. In the plaza, a man is smashing bottles on the ground and then walking on them in bare feet, laying down on them, for the change of passersby.

Medellín’s metro system includes two lines traversed by cable car; both were paid for by Pablo Escobar. We head to the line closest to the city centre, sharing our cabin with a young girl in braces who clutches her schoolbooks and shyly asks us questions. Below us, Medellín explodes in red-tiled roofs, kids playing games of football on the basketball courts, people yelling through megaphones. From the top of the hill the view of the massive city laid out before us, creeping up the valley walls, is sensational.

On the other side of the hill it is a different story, however – a slum that clings precariously to the hillside, wooden shacks with sheets of corrugated iron posing as roofs, held down with large rocks. The boulders in the river at the bottom of the hill are crudely painted and scratched with the names of biblical verses.

That evening we go out to Parque Periodista – a complete reversal of what we’d seen the night before in Zona Rosa. There, the bars had been expensive, tacky and empty. In Periodista the bars are cheap and grungy and overflowing; the park is crowded with groups of young men clutching beers to their chests. The atmosphere is crackling with excitement, sleaze and even a little danger; it has the ambience of a crowded biker bar.

We are soon joined by a man named Luis, who speaks to us in a loud, near-fluent English. He says that he is an astronomer and we ask him several questions on the subject which he seems unable to answer; it is only when we see his university ID card that we realize he was saying “gastronomy”, not “astronomy”, and we drop our questions of supernovas and star systems. Luis bounces on the balls of his feet while talking and dominates conversation – he presses all of our “conman” buttons and all of us hold him at arm’s length throughout the night, though in the end he turns out to be no more or less than an extremely friendly guy with a propensity to chat. When he asks to accompany us from the park to a bar we are all less than enthusiastic but Adam answers in a dull monotone: “Yes, sure, that would be fine.”

We find a cheap bar with outdoor tables on a corner. Two older gentlemen behind us offer me a shot of aguardiente and then, in an act of sweeping generosity, buy us an entire carton. A chubby-faced journalist, happening by, sits down and cheerfully buys us another bottle of aguardiente. He then tries to compliment Danielle by telling her she looks like “a little monkey with glasses” and then promptly falls asleep at the table. A young, slightly dumb girl joins us, a rectangle cut out of her top to expose her burgeoning cleavage; then her brother (“This man’s accents is very annoying in Spanish,” Luis confides to us in English. “All Colombians find that accent very annoying. But I am very glad he cannot understand what I am saying.”); then her much older sister, who talks Adam’s ear off with a litany of complaints and apologies. All three are from Buenaventura on the Pacific coast and have come into Medellin to find work.

It’s a raucous night; we feel as if we’re introduced to half of Medellín and most of its aguardiente. It’s with aching heads the following morning that we board the bus to Guacate. On the bus – lo and behold! – an old lady cackles and passes us more aguardiente. She is clearly very funny – the entire bus is laughing at her every word about us – but her accent is too thick for us to hear anything except “You’re not listening to me!”, “You should study more Spanish!” and “Here, drink this!”. The countryside is of such a lush, impenetrable green that it stuns the mind into silence. Or perhaps it’s the alcohol.

We exit the bus at Piedra de Peñol, walking up the steep hill to the granite monolith, an immense black egg staring out over the extraordinary landscape of lakes and islands.

The rock has a series of stairs constructed of cheap concrete zig-zagging up a cleft in the otherwise smooth surface. The climb is steep and hot and we are forced to take frequent breaks. At the top, sweating and cursing, we’re treated again to one of the oddest national characteristics of Colombians – their hobby of collecting photos with foreigners. Everywhere we travel, from Cartagena to Mompox to Medellin to beyond, Colombians of every age approach nervously, asking if they can pose in photos with us. It’s a mystifying habit but we wipe the sweat from our brows and smile toothily at the call of “One, two, three… whiskey!” as if we are celebrities.

The landscape below is too beautiful to take in. Pathetically, the only comparison we can come up with is Super Mario Land. Far below, on the water, the white specks of swans floating on the lakes.

It is another beautiful day, and our last in Medellín, as we jump a crowded train to the edge of the city. On the bus toward Barbosa a man is drinking rum from the bottle. He swats his wife in the face with a rolled-up newspaper every time he wants her attention.

The water park is our destination, a place of water slides and bored looking families in inner tubes and mobs of little girls who follow us curiously, grilling Erin for gossip. There are large black buzzards bouncing about on the grass looking for scraps. A security guard with a shotgun strapped to his back strolls the perimeter of the park, looking sleepy. And we tumble and slide down the sloshing slides, Erin screaming and Phil always somehow ending upside-down on his face. We could be having this day anywhere in the world but we’re here, Medellín, land of drug kingpins and plastic surgeons, sprinting back up the long, spiraling concrete ramp to the top of the slides like children, over and over, smiling with the rush of blood and the sun on our backs.

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Trip Details: Our trip from Santa Marta to Bosconia cost about 18,000 pesos; the minibus from Bosconia to Mompox will take some negotiating. We’re informed by the staff of the Casa Amarilla in Mompox that the fare should be between 35,000-40,000; we were asked for 70,000 and eventually worked it down to 50,000. La Casa Amarilla comes highly recommended – excellent staff and just one of the most beautiful hostels in which we’ve stayed. Dorms go for 15,000 pesos. Getting out of Mompox takes some doing. Take a taxi north to Bodega for 7,000 pesos, then a boat to Magangüe for 6,000. From Magangüe to Medellin you’re looking at a fare of about 100,000 and a twelve hour ride. In Medellin we stayed at the Black Sheep Hostel; quite a handy place to meet other travellers. Beds go from 19,000 pesos. Piedra de Peñol costs 5,000 to enter; the bus out there is 10,000. The water park is called El Parque Metropolitano de las Aguas; it’s 23km north of Medellin on the road toward Barbosa and costs 8,000.

Music on this video is made up of Joe Arroyo’s “Yamulemao” and “Oye Manita” by Toto La Momposina, both taken from the Putomayo Presents: Colombia compilation.

WE FIND: ourselves in Turbo with Sebastian and Pixie, negotiating with a couple of touts in front of a bus armoured with bull bars and heavy-duty off-road tyres; it is a rough road ahead. The day is hot and our packs are heavy and the touts are shouting; cars are buzzing past, honking their horns and kicking up plumes of choking dust. Eventually we agree to the price, but Pixie is not happy – “I have one rule over here,” she says to Sebastian, “and that is never to buy anything when I’m being pressured,” but she gets in nonetheless. The seats are coated in dust. As we pull around the corner a large, sad-faced drunken man jumps into the stairwell clutching a half-empty bottle of aguardiente, and has to be physically wrestled from the bus by the conductor. Outside, a horse attached to a cart has its head deep inside a wooden bucket.

A couple of hours on an unforgiving dirt road past grand Spanish haciendas leads us to a semi-collapsed bridge where we are forced to change buses. A great crowd of people pushes by carrying produce. A young guy in a smart white shirt and aviator sunglasses walks past with an enormous basket of green plantains balanced atop his head. Everywhere the ground is littered with exploded plantains. The bridge is still crossable on foot; a recent storm has washed away the far bank and the bridge now tilts at an unnatural angle. Next to it, the tattered remains of a pedestrian suspension bridge sway in the breeze.

It is three hours further to Monteria; outside the city a man boards the bus and offers to take us the remaining distance to Cartagena. We agree while the bus driver circles the city, unable to enter the terminal because of a fatal motorbike accident just outside it that has drawn hundreds of onlookers, jostling for the best view. On our final pass of the terminal, the paramedics are lifting the corpse into the ambulance, wrapped in a white bodybag. The driver gives up and heads back into town.

We board the minivan but this new driver wants to go to the terminal for some reason. Still blocked by the crowd, he turns down the highway on the wrong side of the road, trying for the rear entrance. An oncoming semi-trailer blasts its horn at us and swerves away at the last second with such a microscopic distance between us that the two people on the passenger side actually fling themselves from the van and onto the traffic island.

We all pass out in the van, Adam slouching in a shirtless heap next to me. The blinding lights of semi-trailers race across our faces. At one in the morning a cow on the side of the road steps in front of the van. There is the squeal of tyres, a rush of gravity, the sound of something breaking…

Everyone is suddenly awake.

“What was that?” gasps Danielle.
“Was that a person? I think it was a person,” says Adam.
“A cow,” I croak through a dry throat, “It was a cow.”

The cow has disappeared into the bush and the driver inspects the damage. We have lost our front indicator and side mirror. Semi-trailers continue to roar past at short intervals.

We arrive in Cartagena at two in the morning. Pixie and Sebastian split off to a different hostel. The man who takes down our names in the guestbook has lost his left hand; he uses the stump to hold down the page while he writes.

We wake to a steaming sun, sweating with our backpacks on as we trawl the streets for a hostel that has been recommended to us. It turns out to be a dilapidated three-story terrace; our room has large holes in the ceiling, no door on the bathroom and a toilet that doesn’t flush. The shower has no tap; it is controlled by means of a rope, and the drain clogs and forms a stinking cesspool within two days. There are four huge dogs at the hostel that drag rubbish out of the bin and onto the kitchen floor. They leave the rooftop as a minefield of turds.

Outside of the hostel, Cartagena is a masterpiece of colonial Spanish architecture, webbed with wonderful, labyrinthine alleys, littered with leafy plazas. Hawkers everywhere sell chewing gum and fake Cuban cigars; tour groups mill hopelessly about the parks and plazas. The entire city somehow manufactures the ambience of a sunny Sunday afternoon in the park, permeated by the burble of families talking and laughing. It has a dizzying effect – on more than one occasion we even find ourselves watching a mime. And liking it.

But forty-odd hours of travel in cramped longboats and cow-killing minivans takes its toll on the body. My back is twisted and useless for days; I wander the streets crooked and grimacing like Quasimodo. We’re all sick, or injured, or simply exhausted, and between this and the sticky, sweltering heat, we allow Cartagena to slip away from us, floating away beyond the tree line, as we sit and watch it from afar.

Easter arrives, and with it my birthday. The streets are empty and the stores closed; in the blast-furnace heat we catch a bus out east to Volcan Totuma. The volcano – barely worthy of the name – forms a lumpy little anthill at the near end. Only fifteen metres high, it has a line of people stretching down it, caked in dry mud, their bodies ashen and grey.

We leave our packs at the bottom, change into our swimmers in the little wooden toilet block. As we scale the stairs of the volcano, little pieces of cool mud squish under our fingers on the handrail. The texture is unpleasant, like baby shit.

At the top is a square mud pit inside the crater, a riotous orgy of slimy Colombian bodies rising from the muck. The pit is filled to bursting point. A fat man is laying face up in the grey-brown sludge at the bottom of the ladder, laughing uproariously at the feeling on his skin, but refusing to get out of the way for us. Eventually his friend grabs him by the ankle and drags him away, the fat man laughing louder. We sink our feet in – it feels disgusting, but when our bodies sink in entirely we are amazed by the buoyancy; our feet do not touch the ground but even when we stand perfectly still we do not sink. We are suspended perfectly with our shoulders above the mud. It presses in on us like a tight blanket and it is terrifically difficult to move about the crater without grabbing at other people for support.

We cake the mud over our faces and through our hair. Young teenagers nearby wrestle each other until the grappling pair both plunge face-first into the ooze. A woman holds a baby whose face is caked in mud, suffering in stoic silence. We start to get bits of mud in our eyes and our teeth are stained grey. Other peoples’ limbs scrape against us under the blanket of mud, like a monster in a horror film.

Adam decides to put his entire head under, a feat that can only be achieved by having Danielle and I push down on his shoulders with all our weight. He comes back a creature of the swamp, which we find hilarious until he realizes he can’t open his eyes and his ears are blocked with mud. He panics and blindly gropes for his way out of the pit. The girls and I continue to wallow in the mud, floating on our backs and wondering whether the fact of having several dozen sweaty people in the pit at any one time outweighs the health benefits of the mud.

We descend the volcano to wash ourselves in the lake, which is difficult as the lake is already full of the silt washed off of other people, the water grey and cloudy. A boy delivers our flip-flops to the lakeshore and then hounds us for a tip most of the way back to the highway.

The buses north through Barranquilla are small, air-conditioned blanknesses, delivering us to Santa Marta, where we head directly to the beach under the shadow of the port and the mammoth cargo ship docked within. The beach is small, dirty and packed with small boys. Two hit each other with a long piece of bamboo, laughing and babbling incoherently.

Santa Marta may be the oldest town in South America but one would never guess it. In general it is a bland port city with a wide malecon sprinkled with statues whose only real highlight is a ceviche stand off the main drag serving cups of cold prawns in a delicious creamy pink sauce. Walking down what we think is our street, past saddled mules along the footpath, we chat and amble thoughtlessly, and when we look up we are in a ghetto, surrounded by the glazed zombie eyes of crackheads asking for spare change, cigarettes. There are a couple of dozen, standing in a rough semicircle, blocking our path, motionless and staring. It’s a dead end. Somebody is laughing at us. We backtrack and turn down a sidestreet. “Run!” calls a toothless woman sarcastically. “Go on, run!”. A small child follows us down the street in a dirty, ragged white jumper several sizes too big for him, offering us drugs.

We try one of Colombia’s famed beaches, Rodadero, but it’s covered with pigeons, cooing and pecking at cigarette butts. The water is clean and refreshing, though first a jellyfish and then a small turd float by. We rent a tent and sit in deckchairs. A man walks down the sand dressed as an eagle. A woman with deformed feet folded beneath her offers us massages. A pair of fat, balding, fifty-year old men separately make ugly sandcastles on the shore by languidly tossing handfuls of sand on top of each other.

On the way back to Santa Marta our bus pulls up next to an open bus with a children’s party on board. All the kids are singing, a little girls in a pink dress dances enthusiastically. At the front of the bus sit eight soldiers with machine guns across their laps.

The next morning is insufferably hot and humid and we decide after far too much talking to make our escape to the mountains for the day. We walk thirteen blocks to the markets, through meat stalls smelling rancid. Danielle, already sick, almost vomits. There are no buses to Minca, just a man with a beat-up, rusted sedan offering us a lift for 5,000 pesos each. We take a taxi instead and as we drive off the man with the sedan is organizing a group of men to push-start his car.

We pass out of the city through trainyards piled with trash, up onto rough mountain roads where the air blowing into the crawling cab becomes mercifully cooler. Everything is draped in cloud. At the steel-plated bridge into the centre of Minca we wait for a heavily laden donkey to cross, pulled by an elderly lady. We begin our walk up the mountain, unsure if we are headed in the right direction, invisible birds calling from the trees. A man walks past, singing a merry tune as he swings his machete in slow circles.

We come to a wooden bridge over a gushing river stretching from one waterfall to the next, collecting into large swimming holes. The water in the holes is murky and brown from the rains. A large Colombian family swings into the river on a ratty, torn rope, splashing each other and screaming. The water is refreshing, then brisk, then numbing, then bone-chilling. As we stand to leave the prettiest of the girls asks me to take pictures of her posing in her bikini; I reluctantly oblige.

As night falls we catch a cab to Taganga, a few miles further north, a tourist town of quiet bars surrounded by the lapping of gentle waves along the shore.

We have a beer on the beach and a shirtless, drunken man approaches with a beat-up guitar and a harmonica in his mouth. He plays some songs for us, poorly but energetically, tossing the guitar in the air and diving to his knees. He asks for tips and Adam hands him some coins – “Is that it?” he asks incredulously. Adam nods and he tosses the coins back. “Not enough,” he hisses, and stomps away.

The next day Adam and Dan leave to pick our friend Phil up from the airport. They arrive back after dusk; Phil is bright-eyed and smiling, excitement pushing through the haze of exhaustion from twenty straight hours of travel. We head to the beachfront, eat hot dogs and salchipapas from a stand and then take some beers and aguardiente down to the sand. In the playground, some kids carry a puppy by its front legs to the top of a slide and lob it down to the bottom. We are all anxious for gossip from Sydney, and Phil indulges us while downing harsh, anise-flavoured shots of the aguardiente. After a while we all hit the dancefloors in town and perform our traditional dance – one performed solely to illustrate the fact that we can’t dance. The laser lights occasionally escape the dancefloor and illuminate a tree or pedestrian further down the street.

We’re excited to be five. Excited to have Phil here. The night builds in energy; we return to the hostel and play music offensively loud and dance like twits up and down the stairs and chatter excitedly, hanging out the window over the coiled razor wire. When we fall into bed it’s to the crowing of cocks in the hills. The grey light of dawn is rising. Colombia is coming to life.

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Trip Details: Information for the Turbo-Cartagena trip can be found in the last episode. We stayed at Las Piratas in Cartagena, which wasn’t terribly nice but at 10,000 pesos was one of the cheapest places in all of Colombia, and certainly the cheapest in Cartagena. Volcan Totumo is can be reached by catching a bus toward Galerazamba and disembarking at the little rest stop of Lomita de Arena. From there, it’s a half hour walk. It costs 5,000 to bathe. From Cartagena to Barranquilla cost 14,000 and took two and a half hours; it’s then 8,000 and two more hours to Santa Marta. In Santa Marta we stayed at Hotel Miramar for 12,000. Comfortable enough. Getting to Minca in a taxi costs around 35,000 pesos; Taganga is 7,000. In Taganga the hostel was a new one next to the police station – from memory it was called The Owl or something similar and cost about 14,000. It was one of the nicest dormitories in which we’ve stayed and comes highly recommended.

Music on this video comes courtesy of Sonora Dinamita, with “El Ciclyn”, a track so awesome we had to use it twice, and Choc Quib Town, with the beach-ready “Somos Pacifico”.

SO HERE: we are, in a 4WD driven by a lanky Panamanian with a gold tooth cut into the shape of the Playboy Bunny. We were up at four o’clock, giddy with excitement, and even though he was two hours late to pick us up and has stopped every half hour for the last five hours our excitement has not abated. Today it happens. We are on our way, past the Darién Gap and into South America. Today. Today. This is it.

The Darién Gap sounds like the fanciful invention of a writer. A harsh, jungled no-man’s-land, traversable only by a combination of foot and dug-out canoe, peopled by some very dangerous men, armed to the teeth, whose only English phrases include “The ransom is two million dollars” and “Say hello to my little friend”. A land of wild things blocking the only point of contact between the two American continents.

It’s barely conquerable at the best of times – the expedition to cross in 1985-7 in a Jeep, taking 741 days, actually took more time than it would take for a snail to cover the same distance – and since the escalation of violence in Colombia in the mid-90’s, increasingly likely to end up in kidnapping, or worse.

But Diego and Mario, the two Brazilians we’d spent time with in Granada, had explained to us that it may be possible to skirt the edge of the Darien Gap, taking longboats from island to island through the San Blas archipelago and then further south, to the border town of Puerto Obaldía and into Colombia through Capurganá. That was all the information we had to go on.

Our 4WD drops us in the coastal town of Cartí which, against our expectations, is nothing more than a thatched-roof palapa and a carpark. A soft-voiced Panamanian explains that we will need to go to the island of Cartí Sugdub, which is a common stop for passing cargo boats. He guides us to a small longboat. Adam tries to take a photo of a group of men struggling with a homemade sailboat off the pier, but someone on the longboat shouts in protest.

“No photos here,” says the helpful man, “You can take photos on the island.”

I sit down next to a plastic bag full of dead fish and we set off, lolling across the shallow waves, the spray of sea in our hair.

The island is packed – every available space has a cane fence around it, giving the island as a whole the look of a wooden fort. The water around the shore, clear and blue, is encrusted with trash, strewn with plastic bottles and missing flip-flops. On the concrete pier, women are wrapped in bright orange and pink fabrics, covering their lower faces like Technicolor ninjas.

On arriving we’re told wildly conflicting stories – there will be a boat to Puerto Obaldía tomorrow, there will be a boat at 1pm, there are no more boats, period. The boat will take six hours, it will take five days, it will take three days – maybe. An old Kuna man with great Coke-bottle specs approaches us. “I don’t know if there are any boats,” he says vaguely in fluent English, “Maybe later?” He shakes our hands, except Danielle, who he can’t see out the side of his glasses. His name is Charlie; he speaks English because he spent most of his life working on American naval bases. “If you come and visit me in the afternoon, I’d like that very much,” he says, but though we run into him several times, shuffling along in his orange Hawaiian shirt, he never recognizes us again.

The island is small – it can be crossed in any direction in around two minutes. Everywhere kids are playing. They try to push each other into the garbage in the water, they play tug ‘o’ war using their ragged clothes as ropes.

We sit down to a meal of fried chicken and rice and try to formulate a plan. Remarkably, there’s a pair of foreigners already on the island: Yannick and Shirley, a pair of cyclists on a colossal intercontinental odyssey. They’ve been here a day already; they speak optimistically of the cargo boat on the pier and another speculated to turn up in the afternoon, but both are heading in the wrong direction.

We sit on the concrete pier under a ferocious sun. A group of kids surrounds Shirley as she teaches them math. The toilet on the pier is nothing more than a square hole dropping directly into the ocean. I take a walk around the dirt path of the island. The houses all jut against one another; there is literally no free space. All the older women have nose rings and oddly patterned fabrics on their legs; they sometimes smile but rarely return my greetings. There is a tiny school and medical centre, a couple of huts doubling as general stores and a handful with signs advertising cold beer. Against a cane wall, a group of boys play panpipes. Bright masks of cloth hang from doorways.

Back on the pier there has been an offer – a man willing to take us halfway for forty dollars per person. It’s more than we’d like to pay, but it’s encouraging. A German boy, Sebastian, and a Swiss girl, Pixie, have also arrived on the island, two friendly hippies fresh from several months living on a bus traveling through central America.

The pier is starting to get crowded. There are eight of us now. Needing some space, we head to a bar – actually nothing more than a hut with a dirt floor, pitch black inside except for the fuzzy glow of a television set beaming the latest news to half a dozen men who sit silently watching at the back.

We drink our beer in silence, fearful of breaking the respectful reverie the men seem to have for the news program. We order more fried chicken and rice and go to sit on the pier with the others. Darkness falls and the captain makes an appearance. It falls to Yannick to negotiate with him, and he’s a fine negotiator; his Spanish is not much more advanced than ours but the words come quickly to him. He pushes hard, working consistently at the idea that the captain would be silly to miss the opportunity. The captain counterattacks by claiming that, as foreigners, we weigh too much for the boat.

(“Look at me,” says Yannick, indignant, “I’ve been cycling for twelve months. There’s no fat on me.”
“Don’t translate this to your friends,” says the captain, “but you’re substantially smaller than everyone else here.”)

Then the negotiations seem to get away from Yannick. He makes a joke about us all making sure we urinate extra hard in the morning to rid ourselves of excess weight, and this does not go down well. Within minutes the price has risen to forty-five, higher than when we started. “No more negotiations,” says the captain, and walks away.

Everyone talks nervously. “Well, he needs us more than we need him,” goes the refrain, repeated several times. We eventually agree to wake early and try to get the price back down to forty and, failing that, accept forty-five. We play some cards on the balcony of our dorm and head to bed on paper-thin mattresses, a refreshing breeze blowing mercifully through the cracks in the cane walls.

As it turns out, the captain does not need us more than we need him; in fact, quite the opposite. When we awake he is not at the docks, and does not appear all morning. We are now left with no boat. Without even the hope for a boat. Rumours fly. There may be a boat leaving for Caledonia at 1pm, or the next morning. A cargo ship may or may not show up in three days. We sit on the pier and twiddle our thumbs, trying to remain in the quickly disappearing rectangles of shade. Men on the docks bring in crate after crate of soft drinks in cans and bottles. On a pier across from us a group of men fiddle with a large rifle, aiming it out to sea. A store room on the pier holds nothing but cans of beer in pallets stacked to the roof. The seconds click by sedately. When we realize it is only eleven o’clock in the morning I have a quietly suffocating panic attack at the thought of the day stretched out before us on this cramped island.

We go to lunch – the island has by this point run out of rice, so we get fried discs of plantain to accompany the ubiquitous fried chicken – and when we return a miracle has occurred: Yannick and Shirley have found another boat to take us to Ustupu at five o’clock the next morning for forty-five dollars.

The full moon is bright as we pack our backpacks and bikes into the front of the uncovered longboat, wrapping them in tarps as best we can. By 5.15am we’re in the boat and on our way, everyone whooping and hollering at the idea of getting away from the island. But any thoughts of a pleasant cruise are quickly drowned in the thick bursts of seawater that shoot over the bow and onto all of us. Within minutes of leaving, we are all wrapped tightly in flapping blue sheets of plastic. We’re still getting drenched. The little crowded islands drift past and are soon lost in the grey choppy water.

After an hour the sun is hovering low in the sky and we are out of the islands and into the open water. The boat ride is now starting to become scary – the boat lurches down the face of waves and threatens to roll. We are several hundred metres from the shore and a long way from any signs of life. We have not passed another boat. Erin is petrified; at every sway of the boat she gasps and grabs tightly at the wooden plank on which we are sitting. I, on the other hand, am experiencing that rare calm that sometimes occurs in situations which are out of your control but survivable – the tranquil methodical work of planning.

“If the boat goes over,” I am thinking, “I will not panic. I will cling to the overturned hull with one hand and if anybody so much as touches it I will quite happily drown them with my free hand…”

This section lasts another three hours, until we are again in the shelter of islands – these ones uninhabited and lush and palm-filled, like a cliche of a deserted tropical island. The boat gets some water in the fuel line and we take the opportunity to throw back the plastic sheets and get some sunshine, which by now is strong but not yet overbearing. We are laughing, we are joking. The driver spills some fuel onto the floor of the boat while messing about with the engine and the stench of petrol consumes the boat; it sloshes about with the water that is ever present at our ankles. Then it is fixed, the driver reattaches the plastic casing to the engine, back out of the islands and into the open sea.

The driver’s offsider spends much of the trip bailing water frantically out of the boat with the top of a large plastic jug. The sprays of his water fly up in long arcs like a fountain. Adam and Danielle help out with a plastic bag and an empty water bottle.

The boat is cramped and our muscles ache and tremble as the hours pass. Finally we turn in toward shore, finding a narrow channel and following it around to reveal our destination: Ustupu.

We get our stiff legs onto the dock but an old man is in my face, telling me that we can’t stay on the island. He’s saying that there isn’t enough food, that tourists are not welcome; also that he knows of no other boats going to Colombia for the next few weeks. I relay the news to everyone. Our driver, who had repeatedly refused to even consider traveling all the way to Obaldía, suddenly offers to take us the rest of the way for an extra thirty-five dollars per person. He says it will take two and a half, three hours. “Never!” shouts Sebastian with surprising venom when I relay the news. “Never! I’m never getting on that boat again!” He storms away up the pier, followed by Pixie. They sit and stew and smoke. It’s only later that we find out that they had fuel leaking onto them for the entire journey, which explains Sebastian’s mood but not his decision to light a cigarette. Thankfully, he does not explode in flame.

The rest of us talk over our options. Next to the boat a bloated mouse is perfectly suspended in the water. A starfish lies calmly under a blanket of plastic bags and tin cans. Everyone suspects that the islanders are in cahoots with the boat driver to hold us ransom for an outrageous price.
“But it’s the price we wanted to pay!” I protest.
“It’s not about the money,” insists Yannick, who spends the most of the following twenty-four hours describing the situation in terms like “extortion”, “hostage-taking” and “blackmail”. The old man reiterates that he would like us off the island as quickly as possible. The whole situation has a suspicious feel to it. We are all mystified as to why all the boat drivers on Cartí wanted to take us to an island on which we are not welcome.

After unloading their cargo the boat driver becomes impatient for an answer. I approach Sebastian and Pixie cautiously.
“Sorry, I know you probably want to be left alone,” I begin before the words start tumbling out, “but they want us off the island and there’s no way off the island except on our boat and they’re going to leave if we don’t agree to their price now.”
“Yes,” Pixie says quietly, not looking at me. “Yes.”

We tell our boat driver that we’ve agreed, but Yannick, still annoyed at the situation, refuses to pay up front, saying he’ll pay half now and half when we arrive at Puerto Obaldía. He means well but he pushes too hard, then there is a misunderstanding about his intentions and everyone is yelling. The driver’s offsider claims that we are telling lies; there is a general suggestion that we are planning to make a run for it when we arrive, which is clearly ridiculous with all of our packs and gear wrapped up in the boat. A large woman walks over from a nearby house and joins the fray, shouting at us loudly.
“Who the fuck are you?” Sebastian shouts at her in English. Eventually things settle; we agree to pay fifty now and thirty later.

Three local men are to accompany us. We glide slowly out of the dock past a cargo boat flying the Colombian flag. “Viva Colombia!” shouts Yannick enthusiastically, but it receives an ambivalent response from the crew.
“You have your own homeland,” one grumbles. “Why are you cheering for ours?”

The sea is as rough as before but without the weight of the cargo the boat is faster and significantly drier. Despite this new comfort, everyone is now determined to hate the trip and, in particular, the three men from Ustupu.
“You know, your customer service is not very good,” says Yannick to one of the offsiders, “It’s very bad for tourism. The internet is very, very big and we are going to tell everyone.” The Ustupu man gives this threat the look of derision it deserves, while I try to shrink away from Yannick as much as is possible when crammed together on a tiny longboat.

The landscape is truly wild as we cruise the last couple of hours to Puerto Obaldía, though we still pass a few bits of plastic and the top of a jug. But even in our current state – exhausted, famished, sullen and testy – we can’t fail to be overcome with silent wonder at that tangled expanse of untouched wilderness. Finally we cross the cape and the town lays before us. We pull into the sand, jump into the shin-deep water and wade up to dry land.

Puerto Obaldía is far more pleasant and laidback than we expected. We register our names with the port officials sitting lazily around a desk under a tent – the banner next to them reads “Our force does not consist of what we have, but of how we use what we have”.

Plans are already underfoot for the following day; passports are photocopied and stamped, boats are arranged to Capurganá in Colombia. We have not eaten all day. We go to a restaurant across the road from our dorm, and ask if they have chicken – “No sorry, only pork today. But we can go and kill a chicken for you if you like” – an offer we decline.

The shower in our pension is a high tap over a bucket. My body is still trembling and lurching from the hours on the boat. Yannick is still trying to work out if it was blackmail or extortion. The old lady who owns the place plays her television far too loud and mosquitos buzz in our ears all night.

We are up at 5:30 to catch a boat that bounces around the point in the grey dawn, to a spectacular vision of a golden sunrise above the silhouetted palms and murky jungle. The boat slaps the waves hard, throwing us in the air and bruising my tailbone, but within thirty minutes we are sitting on our packs by the beach in Capurganá.

The immigration office, which was supposed to open early for us, does not open early for us. We use the delay to partake of the new Colombian foods – arepas full of egg, the shining perfect orbs of buñuelos. When the immigration office finally opens there is no power, so we are forced to wait another hour. In the meantime we wander Capurganá’s lovely sunny streets, to the bay of black sand and the little red church covered in flowers.

Entering Turbo is a sensation as olfactory as it is visual. The viscous stench of garbage is everywhere. The water in the narrow harbour is a scummy muck so garbage-filled that birds can stand on the surface of the water. It’s the noisiest, smelliest, dirtiest and most chaotic entry point into Colombia, but we’re here. It’s taken two hundred and thirty eight days, but we’re here. We’re here and our hearts are strong and our bodies young and we’re here so bring it on and we’ll start a fire – this is happening and this is it and we’re here to do this so let’s do this bring it out into the light and let’s do it.

We get into the bus for Cartagena and fall asleep.

-

Trip Details: We organized our trip to Cartí through our Panama City hostel, Luna’s Castle. It cost $36 per person; you may be able to find cheaper if you shop around. Be aware that you will need to specifically ask to go to Cartí as most people use the 4WD’s to access the San Blas islands and don’t go all the way. From Cartí to Cartí Sugdub the boat cost $2. We stayed at the hostel next to the pier which I believe is the only place to stay on the island; with a little haggling we got the beds for $5 each. The boat on to Obaldía is variable; we’ve heard of it costing as little as $30 on the cargo ships but they can take more than a week to get there. Be prepared to pay between $60 (if you’re lucky) and $100 (if you’re not) for a longboat, which can be very difficult to find. And be prepared to wait. Take more than one book. The thirty-minute boat trip on to the rather beautiful town of Capurganá is an extortionate $15. From there to Turbo takes about three hours and costs 50,000 pesos (about $28); try not to get stuck in Turbo if you can avoid it. The boat may try to charge you extra for any baggage. We caused a stink over this but it didn’t get us very far. From Turbo to Cartagena, the buses costs 80,000 pesos ($44) altogether. The bus to Monteria cost $30,000 and took five hours; we had to change bus halfway because of a collapsed bridge. Between Monteria and Cartagena we caught a more expensive minivan for 50,000 to avoid having to spend the night in Monteria. It took three hours. You can probably save about 15,000 pesos using the regular bus.

The tracks on this episode are: “No Llores Porque Me Voy” by Idamerica Ruiz with Osvaldo Ay, the Growler’s brilliant calypso track “The Diamond Ring for Emaline”, Los Soul Fantastique’s “Mi Bella Panama” and “El Pajaro Zum Zum” by Ceferino Nieto. All of these are available on one or the other of Soundway Recordings’ fantastic and highly, highly recommended Panama! series of albums.

A TAXI: to the border, an eventless crossing, and here we are. Costa Rica! Now a series of buses – to Liberia, to Cañas, to Tilarán, where there are no more buses and a taxi driver hauls us the rest of the way to La Fortuna, cheerfully singing the advertising jingle for Imperial Beer (“La cerveza / de Costa Rica / [eagle whistle!]”). Lake Arenal looks misty; the sky is deeply overcast and here, in the steamy central American jungle, it’s actually quite cold.

We have come to La Fortuna on our desperately unsuccessful quest to see real, red-hot magma on this trip. So far, no less than seven volcanoes have failed us, but we’re informed that Volcan Arenal is one of the most active volcanoes in the world, erupting almost daily. Outside the cab, a series of expensive hot spring resorts glide by, all subtle lighting and waterfalls gurgling over rocks. We peer at Arenal through the gloom but all is silent and we descend on the town, winding up in a hostel where we cook dinner, drink a beer, and are assaulted by the full-force of an incredibly loud British lout named Jimmy who shouts at us like a living, breathing Twitter post – “Aw shit yeah man there’s some FAHKING good beers comin’ out of the States y’know, fahking microbreweries and all that shite, but y’know, any fahkin’ PISS is good enough for me MATE HAHAHAHAHAHA!”.

Next day is overcast again, drizzling lightly, cold and miserable. This is not what we expected from Costa Rica. We amble about the hostel with confused looks on our faces. We had wanted to visit the volcano but it’s submerged under a thick wet blanket of cloud. Feeling the bite of the cold, we decide to hit the hot springs, our perennial niggardliness causing us to eschew the usual comfort and relaxation of such affairs to trudge down a muddy slope and through an open stormwater tunnel to a secret, free ‘hot spring’, which would actually be better described as ‘the runoff water from the more expensive hot spring resorts upstream that has been soaking the wrinkles, callouses and open sores of hundreds of elderly gringos for several hours’. We lie and chat and afterward find an oddly shaped rapid that, amazingly, sends one sliding at high speed down the moss-slickened floor of the concrete tunnel.

After a time the rain starts to fall in great thick globs that break and splatter across the face. Our gear gets saturated; we make our way up to the road. We are turned down for a beer at the expensive resort next door (“Our bar is for people who are… dry,” sniffs the man at reception, eyeing our dripping clothes as pale, chubby seniors shuffle past in dressing gowns), and stand in the rain until one of the resort’s drivers takes pity on us and carries us back to town.

Another day of buses, of overcast skies. La Fortuna to Ciudad Quebrada. Quebrada to San José. San José to Limón. Limón to Puerto Viejo de Talamanca as darkness falls. The whole day full of vibrant, breathing jungle crushed under the weight of the soggy grey sky.

In Puerto Viejo we have a slow night of chatting with dull Norwegians, of walking listlessly through the rain, of chasing a large crab off the road, pincers waving in fury, of going to sleep in our tents on the wooden floorboards of the hostel.

Next day the rain still pours. We sit in the mosaic-covered open area of the hostel and do a lot of very little. The waves crash loudly, less than fifty metres away, but we never even set foot in the sand.

Only two things come to mind for me about Costa Rica: rain and jungle. But mostly rain. We’d always planned to push through Costa Rica quickly, scared off by dozens of travelers bemoaning the high prices and Americanized culture. But we found quite a breathtaking country – an easy country, certainly, but none the worse for it – and one that was nowhere near as expensive as, say, Mexico or Cuba. But it rained. Across the entire country we saw not a glimpse of blue sky, and so things went to plan: we were in and out of Costa Rica in four days, and left feeling no more connected to the country than when we’d entered.

In the humid rainless heat of the next day the mediocrity of the Costa Rica / Panama border post is doubly depressing and frustrating, a long rail bridge poorly covered in uneven wooden planks leading to a scene we’ve played out half a dozen times already. Here is the fat man with a drawer full of loose cash, demanding a tax “for the city”, wiping his sweating face with a stained handkerchief. Here is the fat tout speaking in an American accent, wearing a Scarface t-shirt and trying to talk us into taking one of his minivans to Bocas. Here are the small children in rags trying to carry our luggage, open doors for us, give us polite directions, anything that may end with a couple of coins being pressed into their palm. We are tired of this. We are done with this.

In Bocas Town on Isla Colon it pours all afternoon, all through dinner, all through the night, through the next day. We drink on a covered pier with starfish under our feet; we lie on our beds staring at the ceiling; we get cabin fever; we bicker; we stand outside with a cigarette and gaze blankly at the dreary weather. The hostel plays a constantly regurgitated reggaeton soundtrack featuring such thoughtful lyrics as “Fuck poonani! / I want fuck poonani-nani!” repeated ad nauseum.

On the third day, when the rain finally ceases and the weather settles back into a muggy grey, we hire a tiny white boat to the island of Bastimentos that putters unsurely over the clear waters. Behind the island, great black clouds swell dramatically. Waves break on reefs off the coast. Five minutes after finding a bed the rain falls again in great sheets, pausing only intermittently throughout the rest of the day. We play cards, make up some pasta, share a couple of bottles of wine, pray for sunshine and head to bed.

Our prayers receive a mumbled half-answer: we get a dry morning and take advantage of it by heading to the beach. The track is long and muddy, the kind of thick brown mud that, just by looking at it, doesn’t reveal whether it’s going to support your foot or swallow it whole. A great blue crab scuttles into the jungle as we approach. The water at the beach is roiling and frothing. It pulls desperately in all directions like a bunch of cats in a bag. It’s difficult swimming but, starved of sunshine for a week, we proceed to force-feed ourselves. Out at sea, one of the local surfers paddles in grinning – he’s snapped his board clean in half.

We walk back in the sort of heat we’d expected but not yet experienced in Panama, a humidity that reaches for the neck and strangles, that doesn’t even allow you to dry from a cold shower before you are sweating once more. Along the path shy boys in school uniforms smile cautiously from beneath their umbrellas. A dog with great fat tumors on her legs shuffles uncomfortably to the side of the road. A man holding a bottle of rum on his balcony shouts to me over his blaring reggae – “Hey there white man! Gimme some love! Gimme some love white man!”

Over lunch we realize the extent of our sunburn, and head back to the hostel to pass out, as the rain starts to pour again.

A small boat, a big boat, and a van relay us south over winding humid jungle roads. Outside David traffic stops dead in its tracks. Ambulances drive by, police, military. Cars are turning back, frustrated. Beside our car is a long line of leafcutter ants, each triumphantly holding aloft its postage stamp-sized load. Above them, a large sign decries the 131 Panamanian road fatalities in the last ninety-nine days. Nobody knows why we are all stopped; theories abound. A traffic cop idly swings his shotgun while talking on the phone. “Water,” announces the older British guy on the bus triumphantly after speaking in halting Spanish to a passing cop. “I couldn’t understand much, but I know it has to do with water. I heard him say ‘agua’.”

“Though he might have been saying ‘Nicaragua’,” he admits after a thoughtful pause.

The skyline of Panama City looms large and bright after the long bus ride; it’s been a long time since we were in a modern city and I feel a slight comfort, a small sense of retreating to the familiar. That feeling dissipates when we step onto a forty-year old city bus driven in frenzied fits and starts by a boy no older than fourteen. Like most things in Panama City, the veneer of modernity crumbles under the lightest touch.

In the light of a new day we walk to the new part of town along the seawall, pressed up against a ten-lane highway into the city. The smell of the fish markets as we approach is intense. Offshore, pelicans plunge into the water for fish. A crane, helping to build some sort of offshore platform, dangles a man in a small cage, trying to put cement blocks in the right place. The sea of boats looks old and slightly decrepit, an odd juxtaposition against the brilliant skyline of huge glass towers.

But that, too, is deceiving. From a distance these skyscrapers are impressive, but up close it becomes clear that they are mere shells, all either under construction or abandoned before completion. The much-hyped and very gaudy Revolution Tower, a Dubai-style spiral monstrosity, lies half-finished after more than a decade. Many buildings have cranes on top, temporary construction lifts going up and down slowly.

Back in the old part of town, Kuna women in bright orange and pink shawls sell cloth masks to middle aged tourists, wandering about in herds while a diminutive guide shouts “And if you look straight in front of you, you can see the skyline of Panama City” and they all murmur appreciatively as if it were a small detail they might otherwise have missed.

An old toothless man in a yellow roadworker vest pulls us up on a street corner further into town and says in blurry Spanish – “You shouldn’t go any further this way. It’s very dangerous. Many thieves who will take your things. Please, go up this way. Don’t go any further down this street.”

We thank him and take the side street, finding ourselves at a department store stuffed with acres of cheap, shitty clothes. We buy replacements for everything we have that is broken or barely holding together. The tag on my new jacket says: “This garment may stain other garments with which it comes into contact. Repeated washing may improve this.”

In the afternoon we all make our mandatory visit to the Panama Canal. In the interminable drizzle a huge cargo ship is lumbering through the locks, assisted by four small locomotives attached to rails on the side of the canal. “It’s like a leetle rolla-coaster,” explains the heavily-accented guide across the loudspeakers. The ship has less than twenty inches leeway on either side. Going to the Panama Canal sounds interesting – and don’t get me wrong, it is – but it also is basically just watching cargo ships moving very slowly while a guide reads scripted facts over a loudspeaker.

We watch a couple of ships go past, the gates of the lock groaning as they open and close, the guide’s facts and trivia crackling across the speaker system.

“It’s like a leetle rolla-coaster,” he says again. There are, apparently, not enough interesting facts and trivia about the Panama Canal to last thirty minutes.

Back at our hostel’s courtyard bar, the stage is being stacked with amps. A young Panamanian guy in muscle shirt, cargo shorts and sunglasses approaches us, speaking English.
“Hey guys, I’m having a party tonight, big party, fuckin’ rad man, you should come down. We’re having a band playing, like, prog rock, they’re just gonna jam all night long man, they’ve got two drums -”
“Sounds awesome,” I say in a dead voice.
“Dude! Right? And they’re gonna play heaps of hip-hop and shit -”
“Wow. Sounds radical,” says Adam, in the same voice.
Eventually he leaves, but his douchebag spiel has already worked its magic – sleep is overcoming me, and I head to bed. We have to be up at 4am anyway, for our four-wheel drive to the coast, and the exciting, terrifying journey onward to Colombia. It’s our last night on the mainland – an ideal time to think back on our winding odyssey through the troubled and beautiful republics of central America, to remember steaming hot waterfalls, topless divers, coconut-tossing devotees of Jah, gangsters on beach vacation, sexually predatory surf instructors, slimy sewers doubling as hot spring waterslides, caged toucans, drunken Vikings, cheap plywood boards doing fifty kilometres an hour down a volcano, and all that sun, all that water, all that jungle, all that sun, all that sun.

But it’s too late; we’re rocked quickly into sleep by the twin-drum attack of jammy hip-hop-prog-rock screaming at us from the bar on the other side of our wall.

-

Trip Details: We crossed from Nicaragua to Costa Rica at Peñas Blancas. We had heard of people being asked for proof of onward travel but we were not. Companies at the border sell bus tickets back to Managua for (from memory) around US$20. In La Fortuna we stayed at Gringo Pete’s for $5 per person. Nice place, lovely owner, though it has some strict rules about noise curfews. Ask at the hostel for the location of the secret hot spring. In Puerto Viejo de la Talamanca we stayed at the massive Rocking J’s, in tents for $5. Despite its size, it had a good atmosphere. We crossed into Panama at Sixaola – we were asked to pay $2 ‘city tax’ and had to provide proof of onward travel (a bus ticket back to San Jose, costing $7). I no longer have the details for accommodation in Bocas, but it wasn’t cheap – there’s little under $15, and nothing under $10. Standards are reasonably high, though. On Bastamentos there is a Thai restaurant called Thai Time, which we highly recommend despite the long hot climb needed to reach it. In Panama City we went with the throbbing Luna’s Castle, which is big and crazy and loud, with a great bar. It was $13 for a dorm.

Music on this clip comes courtesy of Las Robertas, with “History is Done”, Alfredo Escudero y Su Salsa Montañera, with “La Escoba”, and Los Mozambiques’ “Llegamos Ya” to finish things off. Squeezed in the middle is the already much-used “Mrs Love” by Disco Ruido.

TENSIONS RISE: and drop away constantly within the group; we’re only four, after all, and we’ve been traveling a long time together – seven months, now, for Adam and I, five for the girls. And while traveling alongside three of your best friends can be one of the richest and most rewarding experiences in life, it can also be a bit like trying to run down the street with a plastic bag over your head. So there are sunken veins of frustration and hostility constantly swerving, bubbling, disappearing. And, on a handful of occasions, they bleed to the surface. None of us are known for our exaggerated sense of drama – there are no all-day shouted feuds here, no punches thrown, no tedious bathroom lock-ins. Just a quick blast of words (not yelled, but flung like knives) and then we scatter to our corner of the bus, to read or listen to music or – my favoured tactic – to stare vacantly out the window with a big stupid grin on my face to try to demonstrate to the others that I’m having a much more enjoyable day than they are.

It’s in just such a silent, slightly ridiculous tableau that we travel back west through the jungles and plains of central Nicaragua, the trip back from Bluefields proving to be more than we could take. But not even such determined sulking could withstand a town like Masaya.

It’s Sunday and the plaza is full of life; there is a fundraiser for a local hospital for children with disabilities, one man tells Erin (he signals “intellectual disabilities” by sticking out his tongue, contorting his arms and grunting). A little ways south of the concrete horror show of Managua, Masaya isn’t bursting with attractions but it compensates by emanating good vibes from every orifice. Over beers at barn-style bars thrumming with conversation and laughter and romantic ranchero tunes, we’re forced to kiss and make up.

Paul Theroux, in his 1979 book The Old Patagonian Express, relates the “commonly held view” that “Nicaragua is the worst eyesore in the world: the hottest, the poorest, the most savagely governed, with a murderous landscape and medieval laws and disgusting food.” But with a month’s stay in the country we saw nothing of the sort; on the contrary, Nicaragua was the most exceptional of the central American nations. The people were wide-eyed, friendly, curious, funny; the landscape unspeakably beautiful. And the cities – Managua aside – were alive. Granada, Leon, San Juan del Sur: they breathed and pulsed and laughed and sighed. Masaya was no exception. Except, ironically, for its major attraction, its markets – a sad, uninspiring arrangement of tourist bric-a-brac, with a chorus of shopkeepers urging “¡Pasen, adelante!” as we pass their stalls attempting to look interested.

It is admittedly easier to inspire awe as a city when you have a gargantuan volcano looming on your outskirts. From a distance Volcan Masaya appeared squat and unprepossessing, but upon driving to the crater’s edge we find it to be truly enormous – a car driving on the opposite lip is a distant speck – buzzards using the billowing sulfurous gases for updrafts. We climb to the cross erected by the Spanish to rid the volcano of evil spirits caused by human sacrifices, where bumblebees whirr noisily and the volcano and its surroundings spread out in their jagged, formless glory. Signs in the parking lot advise visitors to park their car facing the exit in case of eruption and, if the volcano expels rocks, to hide under your car. A faint rumble from the volcano’s depths sends us scrambling for cover.

We head south to Ometepe Island, two impressive volcanic cones linked by a narrow isthmus in the middle of a massive lake. Walking the black sand beaches, large blue birds with long tails and floppy combs upon their heads fly over us awkwardly and ward us off with a dozen distinct cries. An eagle circles overhead. A vulture sits menacingly on a branch. Waves of crickets pierce the air with their buzz. In one tree, twenty feet off the ground, a troop of monkeys stretch themselves lazily, their tails wrapped tightly around the branch that supports them. As the late afternoon light drapes Volcan Concepcion in a warm glow, a great deluge of bugs descends on us and we quickly flee to bed.

Over lunch the next day we practice our Spanish. The Nicaraguan waiter overhears us and passes us a book full of Spanish phrases translated into English. We thank him and paw eagerly through the book, only to find it full of phrases like “Do you know where the Pope lives?” and “Turpentine is good for sprains”, “America has a large navy, but the British Navy is larger and more powerful”, and “My brother’s horse is prettier than mine”. Useful stuff indeed.

In the morning with the great white fans of a wind farm hazily visible across the lake, we catch a rattling bus around the island to the small village of Merida. I sit on rice sacks at the back. Adam sits next to a clearly drunken man with messed hair and glazed eyes framing a chubby face.
“Americano?” he asks Adam.
“No, we’re Australian.”
“Australia! Another world,” he says dreamily. “Where are you going? Santo Domingo?”
“No, we’re going to Merida.”
“Oh. And you’re American?”
“No,” says Adam patiently, “As I said before, we’re Australian.”
“Ah, Australia. A different world.”
The man is silent for a moment.
“Are you on your way to Santo Domingo?”
This continues for half an hour – same questions, same answers. All the while the man has his arm around Adam’s shoulders and occasionally strokes his cheek tenderly, leans his head on his shoulder, and drinks greedily from Adam’s water bottle. He offers it back – “Ah, no, you keep it,” says Adam. The man guzzles more than a litre in under a minute. Then he slyly eyes about for a place to spew it back up, but his mouth has barely opened when the conductor grabs him by the shirtneck and ejects him from the bus, his half-full plastic bottle of moonshine still sitting by the window.

Jumping off the pier at Merida into a fiery orange sunset we fall quickly in with some new companions – Max and Bec, a bronzed, constantly grinning couple from Bondi on an incredibly thorough round-the-world trip, and Rob, a disheveled and charming Brit who, despite being one of the most clearly intelligent people we’ve spoken to on the trip, seems to have very little idea of how he has come to be in Central America or what he’s planning to do here. We spend the next week with the three of them, chatting and drinking and fooling about; they add a much-appreciated burst of life into our journey.

Together with a few other backpackers we hit El Ojo de Agua, a beautiful waterhole set amidst banana plantations, where we swim and drink sickly-sweet rum from plastic cups and stage elaborate Busby Berkeley choreography for the camera. As afternoon wears on and the late light makes Volcan Concepción fiery and dramatic behind us, we load into the tray of a fruit truck for the ride on to Santo Domingo, where we buy a round of superfluous beers. A three-year old in a red singlet approaches us, hissing “A photo, a photo!” and grabbing for Danielle’s camera. We ask him his name, his age.
“A photo, a photo!” he hisses back.
We hand him the camera and show him the button; he squeezes off twenty-odd photos of us. We try to show him how to look at his work, but he’s not interested; he only wants to marvel at the light of the flash.

It’s a sleepless night, hot and buggy. My throat screams out for water but there’s none available. Adam has fallen asleep in the room next door but left some French music playing; three times there are blackouts and as the sad whirr of the fan dies, the haunting strains float through the paper-thin walls. In the bed across the room Erin tosses and mumbles in her sleep.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“I’m purr-fect,” she says, still fast asleep, “like a cat.”
At 2am I give up on sleep and start playing solitaire; it’s only at 5am that I fall into some Lewis Carroll fever dreams. I wake late, almost missing the bus, and shower quickly in the grim prison bathroom of our hospedaje.

A brutal road in a jolting bus stuffed with sacks of rice and bananas; a ferry that makes a lot of noise but goes nowhere fast; a taxi driven by a man so eager to impress us that he plays “Ghostbusters” and “Down Under” on repeat. And then we are in San Juan del Sur.

San Juan is the last stop for us in Nicaragua, and a sign of what’s to come in Costa Rica – American surfers, American accents, American brands, American food. We go for a drink with Max and Bec at a terrace bar overlooking the wide bay pocked with yachts and overlooked itself by a Christ statue on a hill. Rob stumbles upon us and we all eat fish and chips and hamburgers.
“Wow, the waiter just spoke Spanish to us,” I say, “How exotic.”
During the night we stand ankle deep in the littered sand, where a concert is in progress, five singers in purple churning out the big radio hits. Sleazily grinning Nicaraguan boys with turned baseball caps try to engage some Californian girls in a grind, with no success. An extremely short American man is making out furiously with a large, ogrish Danish woman on the sand, standing in front of us. She looks as though she is trying to eat his face.

San Juan could be a charming place, but usually not after dark.

After months of procrastination, Adam and I make arrangements to do surf lessons the following day. Alfredo, our instructor, is Brazilian but speaks with a thick French-sounding accent. He’s older, late forties perhaps, with a deeply wrinkled face, scraggly blonde hair and a damaged smile. He talks enthusiastically but only semi-coherently, repeating pieces of information three or four times.

“I know you probably teenk that soft-top boards are sheet,” he says defensively, but we don’t even know what soft-top boards are, wouldn’t have a clue, “but these, these are not real soft-tops. They are better! Look, here, thees ees, I swear to God, thees ees my own board, that I use. See? The same.”
He rants on, shows us photos of himself and tells us how good he looks. We are excited.

In the morning we gather supplies from the markets – tomatoes, avocados, tortillas – and jump in the back of the truck to Playa Hermosa, bumping along through the dry buzzing wilderness, clumps of howler monkeys collected on trees in great black masses.

The beach is long and empty with the hammocks and showers of the surf camp scattered loosely in the middle. Alfredo gathers us onto the beach – besides Adam and myself there are a handful of blonde, tanned girls with bodies that seem made of pure, undiluted sunlight, and a pasty, chubby thirteen-year old boy from Canada. We are in a group with the Canadian.

Alfredo pelts us with useless facts as we melt in the brutal sun – “Dees ees eemportant – to go from being a beeginner to an intermeediate surfer they did a study and eet takes an average three to five years eef you spend eleven days surfing per year” – again, he repeats information over and over, begging for time between sentences – “Just geeve me ten more meenutes to say…” – then we are practicing in the sand and his hands are all over the girls.
“Hold your stomach in – like thees.”
“Steeck out your bum until it touches my palm.”
“I should be able to feel your pelvic bone there.”

We hit the water, guiding our huge boards over the roiling whitewater. When we are about waist-deep, Alfredo goes down the line, helping each person onto their first wave – I manage to stand for a brief half-second before falling onto my face; Adam gets into a crouch and rolls off. But after a couple of attempts we both start to find our feet, riding the whitewash in. It’s tiring but thrilling, and the rare occasions of getting it right more than compensate for the periods of frustration between them. Out along the water everyone is standing, falling, paddling. Alfredo is barking orders, making ridiculous hand gestures that are completely ambiguous in meaning. After a couple of hours we decide to go in for lunch, but on my last wave I slip from my board and land on my chest, cracking a rib.

For the rest of the day it hurts me to lie on the board, but we head back out anyway. Adam is now catching waves with regularity, but I, tired out and hampered by the rib, only manage one really convincing ride. Max glides past occasionally, the only experienced surfer in the group, and Rob floats past once or twice. Afternoon light falls; mosquitos start to bite as we hit the sand. Hermit crabs rush the beach in great waves, taking minor casualties from the girls picking them up to exclaim “Adorable!”. The truck turns up late, the rude driver roughly loads our boards in the encroaching darkness, and we are away.

-
This week we start out with Armando Hernandez’s “La Zenaida”, followed by an unknown Nicaraguan cumbia – if anyone recognizes the track, please send us the details! We finish the track with the pummelling “King of the Beach” by Wavves, from his excellent album of the same name.

We’d also like to take the opportunity to congratulate Max and Bec on their recent engagement! Wherever you guys are now, we wish you all the best.

MANAGUA IS: full of ugly steel sculptures draped in coloured fairy lights. We drive around in the dark, attempting unsuccessfully to procure tickets for the odyssey that awaits us. Nicaragua’s capital is an unpleasant city in a region infamous for unpleasant cities; driving around in the dark there hangs a pervasive atmosphere of sleaze and dust and things burning, punctuated at every junction by these ridiculous steel sculptures, blinking at us from the roadside.

No capital city in central America could accurately be called pleasant save perhaps Panama City, but Managua ranks alongside Guatemala City, Tegucigalpa and San Salvador as one of the most immediately unlikeable. Later we will find out that it wasn’t just a baseless hunch; an Australian we met later, in Colombia, told us that he had gotten off an eight-hour bus in Managua and hopped straight in a cab. The cab had driven around the corner, three armed men had gotten in, and after a brief struggle had proceeded to beat him senseless, driven him from ATM to ATM to withdraw all the money he had, and then stolen his every possession, dropping his passport at his feet when they dumped him on the street.

The day following our arrival we purchase our tickets east and make a token attempt at sightseeing, taking a taxi to the Plaza de la Revolución. The taxi driver cheerfully points out what passes for points of interest along the way. “There’s a theatre,” he says. Wow. At length he stops in the middle of a vast, flat expanse of blank concrete, with only a small seafood restaurant squatting on the outside edge.
“Okay,” says Dan, “How do we get to the plaza from here?”
The taxi driver looks confused.
“We’re in it,” he says.

It’s a wasteland. It looks like a mob has come through and looted it of anything remotely interesting, like a car stripped of its parts. There is a giant steel structure that vaguely resembles a Christmas tree, covered, naturally, in blinking fairy lights. It is easily the most impressive feature of the place. The cathedral, made structurally unsound by the great quake of ’73, is covered in barbed wire and scaffolding and ¡Peligro! signs. Over at the flagpole a large team of men work to hoist the gargantuan national flag outside the presidential palace; it is a quarter of the way up before they realize it is upside down. An old man wanders vaguely among us, selling plastic bags of water.
“It’s safe to walk here,” he says, indicating the ground on which we are standing, “But don’t walk over there. Definitely not. It’s very dangerous.” With his hand he is vaguely motioning toward everything to the east and south. He pauses as if thinking.
“Or there,” he says, indicating everything to the north. “Don’t walk there.”

We walk west. Around the corner is the revolutionary monument of a peasant grasping a pickaxe and an AK-47 in ridiculously musclebound arms. The leg is damaged and the steel rods poke through absurdly like some kind of Third-World Terminator. Underneath is a quote from Sandino, the national hero: “Only the labourers and the farmers will go to the end.”

That night the cold wind pours in through the open windows of the bus but its howl does nothing to overwhelm the non-stop parade of mariachi and reggaeton blasting through the speakers. It is three in the morning and we are on our way across Nicaragua, heading to Big Corn Island, on the Caribbean Sea. At three-thirty we stop at a food station selling what look like they may, at one point, have been hot dogs, but now look like shriveled penises wrapped in mouldy bread. As I line up for the toilet a softcore S&M film is showing loudly over the heads of the tired looking passengers, trying hard not to look at what they are eating.

At four in the morning we pull in to the small village of El Rama, where we are shuffled in the pre-dawn darkness to a line of longboats, lashed together with rope. Life jackets are handed out while a preacher in baggy trousers screams fire and brimstone from the dock.
“Jesus is the way!” he shouts, drawing jagged lightning bolts in the air with his hands while the entire boat listens intently with eyes closed and heads bowed.

The day is overcast and, for tropical Nicaragua, absurdly cold. We are tired and in foul moods from the long bus trip, and we scowl at the jungled riverbank and the passing hulks of ancient fishing boats, until the rain starts pouring and a plastic tarpaulin is pulled over our heads. We put our heads in our laps, feeling the dribble of rainwater down our necks, and make a half-hearted attempt at sleep.

The longboat leaves us in the sketchy port town of Bluefields, named for the Dutch pirate Abraham Blauvelt, who haunted these waters some four hundred years ago. Nowadays Bluefields has an appealing energy but it’s decidedly disordered, gritty and sleazy – certainly no diamond in the rough. A long walk of the streets throws up not a single restaurant or cafe besides a few decrepit comedores selling second-hand shoes in a side cabinet beside the bain-marie. Our run-down hotel thoughtfully provides us with a towel, toilet paper, and a condom. We sleep fitfully through a night of bumps and squeaks and grunts and screams, and wake early to buy tickets on the once-weekly boat to Big Corn.

The boat is an old cargo ship packed out with people and cargo. A pair of women sell food from tubs at the back of the boat. It rumbles through the water, tooth-grindingly slow, stopping for a full hour at the port of El Bluff while two Chinese sailors pound at the rust of their fishing boat with mallets – whack-whack! whack-whack! – and a naval officer abruptly grabs our backpacks and searches them roughly.

We cheer as we finally pull out of the dock but celebrations are short-lived. We hit the open ocean and what follows is seven hours of lurching swells that crash over the bow, saturating us. The boat rises and falls, rises and falls, plummeting over the top of each wave sickeningly. A Dutch surfer begins to throw up over the side railing. People are queuing up to get inside to the bathroom. Again the day is overcast and cool and, now drenched, we sit in silence, holding ourselves and chattering our teeth. There is nothing to look at except a bleak borderless grey.

It is tough to describe the effect of seven hours of travel in this manner – and if I could I probably wouldn’t want to. Every moment is painful; the only recourse is to sleep, and that is only possible with tablets – when I awake I am overcome with nausea and the boat is still ploughing through a high swell; we are still less than halfway there. I could cry.

After forty-three hellish hours of travel, we arrive at Big Corn Island – and all fatigue and frustration drops away. White sand and turquoise water stretch out in both directions. After years of travel in Australia, Asia and Central America, we’ve seen plenty of nice beaches, but very little compares to this. The sand is like powder, and the water – well, forget the cliches. It’s not as clear as glass. It’s as clear as air. Things in the water actually seem sharper than things outside it.

Brig Bay, the small town on the island, has the ambience of a small fishing village. Aside from a dive school, there is very little on the island specifically aimed at tourists. The people are overwhelmingly friendly and welcoming, smiling big gold-toothed smiles as they join us in a glass of rum or a game of cards. Erin enrolls at the dive school – an outfit so much more low-key than the madness of Utila that it hardly bears comparison.

We eat satisfying breakfasts of gallo pinto (rice and beans) with eggs, and eat dinner at dirty little shacks selling delicious skewers of barbecued pork. In the bars the islanders grind hypersexually to reggaeton hits with bored faces, while green laser lights sketch stars and squiggles across their bodies. For every second song the entire crowd sits down in their plastic chairs and the bar is full of the wonderful burble of the local Creole as glasses are clinked and downed. Then another song starts, everybody stands, and there is the intense silence of the grind.

During the hot and humid day, while Erin studies and dives in that outrageously limpid and unblemished water, we rent bicycles and cruise about the island, beach to beach, each more beautiful than the last. As we head south the road peters out into dirt track which, in turn, peters out into undergrowth. With barking dogs at our heels we lift our bicycles onto our shoulders and lug them up a twisting goat path that ascends Quinn’s Hill, but at the top a man advises us to go no further – “Lots hijackers down dat way, man” – so we turn back towards the airfield, riding slow curves over the bumpy airstrip. Kids walking the runway home from school smile and wave until they disappear into the heat shimmers.

Towards the north of the island the beaches are strung thinly with drifts of dry-brown seaweed, banks of coral offshore forming restaurant-menu mazes in the ocean. Islanders slouch low in deck chairs outside their colourful wooden cottages. A spider monkey chained to a pole in a front yard runs crazed laps and scratches its back with the tip of its tail.

We get into the water at the deserted Silver Sands Beach, where a couple of boys of about twelve come out to join us, babbling and laughing from the moment they come into view. They challenge Adam to an underwater race back to shore – he beats them, closely, and they stand around looking dejected until one suddenly brightens and walks over to me.
“Here,” he says, pressing something into my hand, “Hold this for me.”
I look down at what I am holding. Evidently deciding that it would improve his speed, he has handed me his shorts. And now here I am, a white guy in a Third World country, sitting on a tropical beach holding the pants of a small boy as he swims naked in front of me. This is possibly not a good look. I shriek, fling the shorts into the water and run back onto the sand. The boy beats Adam comfortably.

When they step out of the water a man with a great black shock of a beard emerges from a bush, smiling.
“Havin’ yourselves a sun-bath?” he asks in his gentle Caribbean accent. “I only ask cos dis all my land. All mine. Dees trees, dis boat, dat sand, de water. It all mine.”
“Sorry,” says Adam, “We didn’t know. We can leave.”
“Naw,” he laughs, “You all right. You jus’ havin’ yourselves a sun-bath. You no gon’ steal my engine.”
He looks suddenly panicked, as if realizing he shouldn’t have mentioned the idea of stealing the boat’s engine.
“Naw,” he says more confidently, chuckling as he walks away, “You no gon’ steal my engine.”

Our last day opens with the discovery that thieves have struck in the night, looting everything that was outside – clothing belonging to Dan and Adam and the nice Swedish boys staying next door. The enormously rotund woman who owns the hostel is less than sympathetic – “I bin tellin’ ya to take evret’ing inside” – she’s far more concerned by the fact that the thieves scattered an ashtray across her yard.

We mope about the rest of the day, waiting for our boat, the Captain D, to depart on the long journey back toward Bluefields. The Captain D, like the first boat, is full to bursting with people and cargo, but upstairs, mercifully, lies a large area of small cots and green hammocks strung haphazardly about the deck. We excitedly grab a cot each, and I lay my head back on the limp little pillow, looking forward to a night of the ocean breeze across my face and of staring out at the stars.

Instead I drift directly to sleep. It’s a wonderful, restorative, refreshing sleep, and I rise only when the sun hits my eyes as we chug into Bluefields. I stretch lazily, smile at the others, look around sleepily at the docks full of steel girders, crates of soft drink, telegraph poles and people milling restlessly, and wonder how long it’s going to take to get out of this shithole this time.

-

Music this time out comes courtesy of Eliopoldo Amador and Santos Perez Garcia with “Caballito Chontaleño”, Gustavo Leyton, the ‘Nicaraguan Kenny Powers’ (seriously, check out his videos) with “La Cumbia de Nicaragua”, and Black Czar’s brilliant “Bamboo Dance”, from the very worthy Panama! compilations put out by Soundway Records.

“PASSPORTS, PLEASE,”: says the Honduran official brusquely. We’re sitting on the Nicaraguan border at six in the morning, after an epic bus journey across Honduras, from the thick jungle of the north through the lakes and plains of the centre to the dust and traffic and power lines of Tegucigalpa, the capital, an immensely unpleasant city where everything is decayed and broken, red like rust, red like dried blood, all the properties stacked with rusted automobile parts, children playing in the driver’s seat of a forklift abandoned among the debris.
“There is a five dollar departure tax,” says the official.
“No, there isn’t,” replies Adam, and the official glares but stamps his passport.

At Nicaraguan migration a short flustered man approaches us outside the window, handing us a receipt for two dollars and saying that we need to pay it to the city. We look pleadingly at the man behind the window.

“Don’t worry, that’s not real,” he says, “You don’t have to pay that.”

The small man snatches the receipts off us, scowling as he stalks away. Relieved, we hand our passports to the man behind the window, smiling behind his thin moustache.

“Okay, that will be twelve dollars each.”

We look at each other with fatigue. This is quickly becoming tiring.

“Could you show us some identification please?” I ask. The man is wearing a plain shirt with no badge. He starts to say his name but when we ask again for identification his eyes flash with anger.

“If you don’t want to pay, go back to Honduras!” he shouts, flinging our passports back at us and storming to the lunchroom. We try, pathetically, to threaten to contact the authorities with our broken Spanish, but he continues to sulk in the lunchroom and refuses to return. We sit for an hour tossing stones idly, looking blasé, but we are tired and we are crushed; we pay the money and skulk off to the cramped bus to León to pass out.

León is a stunning city, sun-blasted and blistering but possessed of a sultry vitality that infects us quickly and incurably. Socialist graffiti and murals are splashed about the walls across town: here is national hero Sandino stepping on Uncle Sam’s head; here is the green serpent of the CIA attacking the FSLN’s literacy program; here is a series of huge letters in black spray paint screaming “Death to the imperial invaders!”. Icecream vendors ring their bells in the heat; an air-raid siren wails but no-one takes notice.

In the gargantuan cathedral statues of saints are being built and scaffolded; a pile of detached saints’ arms lie on a table in a tangled heap. At the front of the cathedral Jesus stands atop a wooden crescent, his arms outstretched, his head backed with a wooden ring dotted with cheap lightbulbs like a carnival sideshow.

The streets are thronged with wealthy Nicaraguans out to dinner; tonight there is a boxing match between a Nicaraguan and a Puerto Rican and as we walk the streets we can hear the commentary blaring from televisions and radios. Outside the cathedral a large screen has been set up between the hot dog and pizza stands and people wander about shiftlessly, eyes on the fight. We order a bucket of rum at a bar and a curly-haired man approaches us, asking if we are watching the fight.

“It is important, I think,” he tells us in fluent English, “because this Nicaraguan fighter, he is not very nice. He has no courtesy. No respect. He says to the other fighter – “You are a fag!”” – here he slaps Adam on the shoulder and looks at Danielle to say, “Excuse me for my language. This fighter, he says – “Fuck your mother!” – like that – “Fuck your mother!” and then he says “Your dead father can suck my dick. Tell your dead father to get ready to suck my dick!” So I do not know how to feel. If he wins, he is Nicaraguan. But if the Puerto Rican wins, I will be happy.”

The bar is set up oddly because everybody is attempting to position their seat so that they can see the small screen beaming through a doorway from the kitchen. The Puerto Rican wins, and I walk back to the hostel along silent, darkened streets.

Outside of León smoulders the Cerro Negro volcano on which it is possible to ‘surf’, sliding down the steep black slopes on pieces of plywood at speeds of up to 80km/hr. The opportunity is too good to resist.

A big orange truck rushes Dan and I, plus a group of assorted foreigners, out of town across rough dirt roads. A small mango, used by some village children as a makeshift baseball, flies up with the crack of the wooden bat and lands at our feet in the back of the truck. The children wave at us to return it, but we are too immersed in passing it amongst ourselves and making witty comments to notice.

The volcano looked unimpressive from a distance, contrasted against the others surrounding León, but as we draw close its black shadow rises monstrously in front. I can feel my heart thumping already. I feel distantly sick. We are loaded up with orange cloth bags full of our safety jumpsuits and plastic visors, and handed our plywood boards, metal-backed with a piece of white plastic laminated on for extra speed.

We begin our hike up the crunching black slopes. The sun is glaring and the boards are heavy but there is a stiff breeze to compensate. After half an hour we can see into the white, steaming sulfurous crater. The wind blows hard and catches our boards, almost overbalancing us on the slope. It is a sheer drop of sand speckled with rock, stretching hundreds of metres to the distant speck of the truck.

The guide takes us through the basics of steering and braking, all of which is done with the feet.

“Have their been any serious injuries?” asks a musclebound Canadian, who has quickly identified himself as the alpha male of the group, “Any broken bones?”

“No,” says the guide, “Only gravel rash.”

“Excellent!” says the Canadian with gung-ho conviction, “I won’t even need to use the brakes, then.

“Yes, only gravel rash,” continues the guide, “And not even all the way down to the bone. Some people have come close, though.”

Everybody turns a shade paler. Nobody volunteers to be first so two girls are picked to take their boards to the top of two tracks that stretch away down the slope toward the orange truck that forms a distant speck on the plains below. They shuffle their bums forward carefully, feet planted firmly in the sand, until finally the slope takes over and they careen wildly, quickly transforming into balls of dust that streak down the black in a fury of white.

It comes to my turn and I sink nervously into the sand and lower my visor. The visor is badly scratched; I can barely see through it. I take off, feel the speed building beneath me, the first bits of rock and gravel smashing against my face like pinpricks. Then the speed is out of control; my feet are skimming the ground and it’s a struggle to stay upright. Halfway down the rider beside me pulls in front and then streaks away. My face feels like a spaceship traveling through a meteor cloud at high speed. I clock on the radar gun at 50km/hr; the gung-ho Canadian comes in at 65km/hr but the rider next to me wins the day with an incredible 69km/hr. A Frenchman, coming in at speed, crashes at the bottom and rolls for about fifteen metres, but is uninjured.

We arrive back in León bruised, battered and smelling as if we’ve been in a coal mine. My shoes are destroyed. The next day we head south to Granada.

In Granada we walk from the bus station past the ruins of the old hospital, where a security guard sits and idly tosses stones, a double-barreled pump-action shotgun slung loosely about his hips. We wander the pretty lanes, and sit on the perimeter of the only Irish pub, as the crowd drinks and chats good-humoredly. It’s St Patrick’s Day, though, so of course this situation cannot last, even in this obscure humid pocket of Central America. Sure enough, one of the Irish bartenders, a pasty bald guy in his late twenties with anger written across his face in red exclamation points, emerges from the bar with a megaphone.

“Whatever coont just came in ‘ere and took my fookin’ IPad,” he yells, the megaphone distorting his voice, “had better return it right fookin’ now, I’m tellin’ yer. That thing had sexty-four Gigs of my fookin’ music on it and if I find out who took it I’m gonna bash his fookin’ head in.”

He stalks back and forth, muttering “Sexty-four fookin’ Gigs” loudly. Talk resumes for a moment; then there is a scuffle as the Irish bartender yells at a much larger, stronger and more-tattooed American. The American yells back; they stand toe-to-toe, then the American guy turns around to take off his shirt – a clever manoeuvre that allows people to get between him and the bartender without looking like he’s backed down.

Then, in a display of the typical American generosity that dictates that they never allow any other nationality to look like the biggest dick in the room, he descends the stairs crowing triumphantly, “Sixty-four fucking Gigs man? You know what, you can take those sixty-four Gigs and shove them straight up your ass, man!”

Then he turns around arrogantly, lifting his arms, soaking in the adulation of his imaginary audience, and walks off with his friends slapping him on the back in solidarity.

The following night word spreads to us via our new Brazilian buddies, Diego and Mario, that there is going to be a big party on the slopes of Mombacho Volcano, just outside Granada. We buy some rum for the road and pile into minibuses stacked with drunken backpackers.

The van pulls up on a dark bit of track. The driver tells us to get out, though there are no lights, no music. Someone starts walking and everyone follows silently over the rocky ground. The track rises sharply. There are still no lights, though we can discern the distant pulse of music somewhere in the distance. Unable to see, I trip and curse, sweat and fumble. I have no idea where I’m supposed to be going. Still the rocky track goes up endlessly. The other backpackers, sobering up behind me, begin to get frustrated. When we finally reach the ramshackle wooden building clinging to the side of the volcano, I find a patch of dirt, sit down and catch my breath.

The party is an immense, sweaty, chaotic orgy. There is a suspension bridge outside on which a line of people are jumping frantically. Shirtless Americans grind against the bar. Some people are swinging down a fireman’s pole. Mario wanders about clutching the severed donkey head of a piñata. A man in a ballroom gown strides past yelling the lyrics to “American Pie”. Inside the toilet are several signs reading “NO POOP, VOMIT OR TOILET PAPER IN THE TOILET. If you poop or vomit in the toilet you will clean it out yourself by hand!!!” with overly-graphic explanatory diagrams beneath. European girls clutch their rum and cokes coyly; it is not long before Adam disappears with a pretty girl in a masquerade mask, never to return. Diego and Mario are soon to follow.

The girls and I remain, dancing to an increasingly uninspiring mix of 90’s alterna-hits and retro favourites. As we stand to leave we hear the crash of bottles breaking, by a skinny man flying out the door and onto the dirt. The owner emerges, yelling furiously.
“You fucking asshole!” he yells as the man slowly stands up, “Breaking my fucking glasses! Get out of here. Go!”

The man wobbles toward the path down the hill but then, inexplicably, turns back toward the bar, and takes a few disordered steps.

“No! Get the fuck out of here!” yells the owner and shoves him again. The man falls into a shallow ditch, his legs tangled unnaturally. Erin tries to help him up but the owner pushes her away roughly.

“No!” he yells, spittle flying, “Leave it! Leave him! You don’t understand! You don’t know what goes on!”

The drunkard stands unsteadily. He makes his way to the path and down it, achingly slow, shadowed by the owner, who punches him whenever he strays from the path. We follow them down and, amidst the yelling and the slapping of flesh and the yelps of pain, I’m glad to have the sound and the grey blur of bodies to help me find my way down the mountain.

-

PEOPLE HAD: been spouting excited stories about Utila as far back as Zacatecas, Mexico, and we had come to imagine a lethargic island of sandy streets and wild, all-night parties. But first impressions aren’t great; from the moment we set foot ashore we are pushed to the side of the concrete roads by motorbikes, ATV’s, golf carts and tuk-tuks roaring past at ridiculous speeds by shirtless American boys with bleached hair. We wander aimlessly with our backpacks sticking to our backs in the heat. A portly American bellows at us from his front verandah to offer us a room.
“Everywhere better than mine is full up!” he yells, “There are cheaper places, but they’re shit! Just dirty, rotten shit!”
We continue walking.
“Hey you!” he shouts to his elderly neighbour, “Yeah, I’m talkin’ to you! They want a room!”

At the Treetanic Bar we have a couple of beers before the place fills up with divers. A bell is rung and the bartender calls out that Portia has today passed her divemaster course; he says she has one last test to complete. Portia sits up on the bar, a ruddy-faced Australian in a bikini top.
“Show us your tits!” someone shouts.
Portia dons a snorkeling mask and the bartender pours blue Curaçao into the snorkel until, finally surrendering, she yanks the snorkel from her mouth and spits the liquor across the people in front, most of it dribbling down her chin and stomach.
“Show us your tits!” someone shouts again.
The bartender is now pouring beer into her goggles, which Portia is sucking through her nostrils. The beer is finished, Portia’s hands are thrown skyward, and the party begins.

Next morning after a breakfast of johnnycakes stuffed with ham, eggs and cheese, we’re ready to see Utila with fresh (though bloodshot) eyes. We see a postcard: white sand, azure water, swaying palms. On the hot streets, young girls on bicycles, their hair in pigtails and cornrows, scream at each other in the gentle Caribbean cadence of their unintelligible Criolle. Rotten tomatoes sit in boxes out the front of the pulperias, the bananas soft and covered in tiny flies.

We rent bicycles and roll down to Chepes Beach for a swim, the powdery sand clinging to our feet. Then east around the point on a hot dirt road, the rustle of lizards darting off on either side. The sand and scrub to either side is littered with Private Property signs and occasionally a dirt bike whines past us. We pull up on a rocky outcrop overlooking the sea, separated from the ocean by a three-foot strip of plastic bottles and trash. Adam tries to go for a swim but punctures his feet on the urchins and dead coral. Erin and I turn back for Bando Beach while Adam and Dan look for a sealed road back to town. At Bando a couple of girls lazing behind the bar, gossiping in Criolle, take our entrance fee and we swim in the warm clear water, a baby shark swimming circles of Erin’s shins. Dive boats rumble past in the distance.

The following morning Adam and Dan head to the first day of their open-water dive course. Erin and I push off toward their dive school to hitch a ride on the one o’clock dive boat. We sit on the warm wood of the pier while the divers, laughing and joking, load the old wooden boat with the grey clinking oxygen tanks. The divers are young and tanned and full of fun, all shirtless and most sporting a small beer gut from their time on the island. We head out to sea, sitting on the front deck of the boat in the sun.

In the open water we stop and the divers disembark. We stay aboard with a handful of other snorkelers – two Scandinavian girls and Brian, an Australian – and Hoover, a native Utilan who is driving the boat. Brian asks Hoover some inane question about Henry Morgan’s fabled treasure. Hoover looks distantly out to sea.
“Man, I wish I had dat treasure,” he murmurs, “If I had dat treasure, man, I wouldn’t be drivin’ dis fuckin’ boat. I’d be far away from everyone, man, no more people, no more of dis fuckin’ ocean, man, jus’ me and some cows and grass and fuckin’ pigs. Somewhere widout de heat. But not cold, man. Jus’ cool.”
“So, New Zealand, then?” asks Brian.
Hoover grins. “Yeah man! New Zealand! Take me to New Zealand. Anywhere but here.”

We try to snorkel in the open ocean but the sea is rough and we are overcome by jellyfish. Hoover looks at us gravely as we board.
“Dis is why I don’t swim, man. Dere are t’ousands of dem fuckin’ jellyfish, billions of dem, de whole ocean is infested.” He almost spits the last word.

We sit back out on the front deck in the sun and await the divers. Without warning, Erin, who has shown no signs of seasickness all trip, looks at me and vomits, all over the deck and her sarong, and now she is looking at me in panic. She can’t breathe. Her eyes are terrified. She’s choking. I go to help her; she coughs and I look to see if she is alright, but she is still choking and I run behind her and start pounding on her back, shouting out for help, but there is only her and I on the front of the boat in the open ocean. The horizons are empty. There is nobody here. I shout again and people start running to us but finally she gasps and sucks in air and sits down to recover.

Hoover drives us all to the next spot, which is clear and shallow over a reef of coral and gently rippling seaweed. The blood is still bursting in our veins from the panic, but the fish are brightly coloured and curious, and for a long moment there is peace in this, the long gawking stare at a different world. The fish pass in front of our visors like traffic on a main road.

Another day passes; we wake early and walk the already warm concrete to the pier of the diving school. The sun beats down on the steel-blue wood of the front deck. Adam and Dan are along on this boat ride, the final day of their dive course, and Erin is doing a fun-dive with them. At the first dive site the fish are clustered close to the surface, electric blue, yellow and black stripes, dull grey. The divers sink in a fountain of bubbles and I strike out in my snorkeling mask and flippers, swinging the underwater camera with an outstretched arm. The world beneath is incredible, but jellyfish in little string beads prick at my back and arms and salt water pours into my mask and snorkel; coughing and spluttering I head back to the boat. I make three more attempts and then pass out on the bench behind Hoover as the water squelches beneath us.

Adam looks exhausted after the dive but Dan and Erin are happy and excited. We lie out on the front deck for what seems an eternity as Hoover does a sweep of the north side of the island in search of whale sharks.
“How do you know where they are?” someone asks.
“Look at the sky,” answers Diego, the stocky Argentinian instructor with a shock of blonde hair, “Where there are birds, there’s probably a fish boil, where hundreds of fish are churning up the water in a circle. If there’s a fish boil, there’s almost definitely a whale shark circling it.”

But there are neither birds nor fish boils and finally, without even realizing that we have turned around, we are flush up against the north side of the island, where waves crash against a rocky escarpment.

The boat lurches drunkenly, and it’s difficult for the divers to assemble their gear. I wait until everyone has disembarked and it is only Hoover, Diego and the two trainee divemasters remaining aboard. Diego looks at the two trainees disparagingly.
“Come on guys, let’s have some role model behaviour here. You look a shambles. Look, that’s all twisted, that’s on backwards. Think about it, guys! You’re supposed to be examples. Now get in there and gather everybody to the side of the boat.”
As they jump in he shouts after them: “Do as I do and as I say!”
He shakes his head at Hoover. After three years on the island, Diego is one of the few foreigners who can speak the island dialect without sounding like a fraud, and now he says, “Evrebody wanta be a divemaster; nobody wanta act like a divemaster.”

I dive in but the sea floor is blank, an empty grey, and the tide sweeps over me viciously. The divers have entered a subterranean canal of coral populated by spotted drummer, puffer fish and rays, but it’s inaccessible to me. I rise from the water and sit on the swinging ladder, the fins still on my feet, the sun drumming on my back. The boat rolls deep to the right and there is the clang of an oxygen tank rolling against one of the benches.

When everybody is up again we gather on the front deck. Everyone is abuzz with the news, reported by Hoover this morning, that the silent dreadlocked German who ran the barbecue at Evelyn’s Bar and Barbecue for fifteen years had, the night before, grabbed his .38 seemingly at random and shot two tourists, a man and a woman. The man had blocked one shot with the lid of an icebox and the second bullet had grazed his scalp. The woman had been shot twice in the back and was taken in a boat to the hospital in La Ceiba. The gunman was being held in the lockup on Roatan Island.
“You just can’t go around shooting tourists in the head on this island,” says one American instructor, smiling, “In the leg, maybe. But not in the head. It’s bad for business.”

Hoover appears on the front deck, pressing a mobile phone to his head and scowling at the horizon.
“Yeah, I t’ink I see you, man. You fuckin’ kiddin’ me. I dunno – that be fuckin’ far man. It fuckin’ far. I don’t know.”
He disappears inside and the engine is started before anyone has a chance to do roll call. A whale shark has been spotted and we are heading toward the horizon. The American instructor briefs us:
“If we come up on a whale shark, everybody is to put on snorkels and fins and enter the water quietly, two by two. If you’re lucky enough to swim with one, don’t come too close to it, definitely don’t touch it, and don’t surround it if you’re in a group. And Hoover’s come out this way on his own time, so anyone that swims is to tip the captain two hundred Lempiras.”

After a few minutes a clutch of vessels becomes visible in the distance, and our boat growls through the water toward them. There are half a dozen dive boats from Utila, as well as a couple that have snuck over from Roatan. Diego lifts his sunglasses and surveys the scene.
“This is why I never go swimming with whale sharks,” he mutters, “It’s a fucking zoo.”
He looks over at us all sitting idly on the deck.
“This stuff happens fast, guys. If you expect to see a whale shark today, get inside and get your gear on. Now!”

Inside the boat, all the dive gear is piled haphazardly in the middle of the floor. About a dozen people are lined up with fins on and snorkel mask hanging limply around their neck, waiting.
“All of us out here and there’s not even a fucking fish boil,” someone says quietly.

After twenty minutes another boat idles up close and the two captains have a shouted conversation in Criolle, entirely unintelligible except for:
“She a big fuckin’ bitch, man. T’irty feet.” – from the other captain. His boat drives away, and there is a pregnant pause as everybody looks at our captain expectantly, looking for a nod or a shake of the head. Looking for a sign. Hoover gazes despondently at the endless blue before him for a minute, then turns the boat around and revs the engine.
“She gone, man,” he says to Diego, “She gone.”

Under a blazing orange sunset we sit by the pier of the dive school, watching boys throw themselves into the water and take pictures of themselves doing it. A small boat chugs in. A group of the instructors and divemasters have spent the day in the cays for the birthday of a pretty Australian girl named Jennifer. They are all hopelessly drunk now. As the boat comes to a stop, Jennifer pulls her big pale breasts out of her bikini top and waves them at a passing dive boat. The girls behind her take up the chant.

“Tits! Out! For the boys!” they sing, “Tits out for the boys!”

The boat nudges against the pier and Jennifer tumbles back onto her seat, sprawling over the empty bottles and cans. It takes two of the boys to lift her out of the boat and onto dry land.

-

Only two tracks this time out but they’re good ones – Anastasio y los del Monte with “Dias Pasados”, and Neon Indian’s stone-cold classic “Deadbeat Summer”, from his Psychic Chasms LP of 2009.

BACK IN: San Salvador, we find an ancient station wagon posing as a taxi; our driver is short and rotund, bald but for a horrible slicked-down combover. He squints and has a gold tooth that he sucks on between sentences. Winking, he reaches in the rear door and releases a rope that holds the rear door closed. It pops open and he screams “Automatic!” with a laugh. He’s giggly, chattering and obsessed with distances.

“Oh, the border!” he says, when we tell him our plans, “From La Palma, the border is eight kilometres. From here to La Palma is sixty-seven kilometres. So altogether it is seventy-five kilometres.”

“Oh,” I say, looking out the window.

“In a straight line,” he says, leaning in close as if telling me a secret, “it’s only forty-eight kilometres away. But because the road is so windy, it’s seventy-five kilometres to the border!” He giggles abruptly.

At the bus station hustlers try to approach us with their broad American accents. There is a concrete guard tower full of soldiers, and most of the buses have several windows smashed in, the spiderwebbed glass throwing the sun into our eyes.

On the other side of the border, between rows of parked semi-trailers stretching as far as the eye can see, a pickup truck full of men in cowboy hats stops and picks us up. The back smells of manure. We pass two cow skeletons lying in ditches by the side of the road, pieces of hide still attached like ragged clothes. These will be the two trademarks of Honduras: cowboy hats and roadside cattle carcasses.

Central America is often spoken and written of as if the countries were indistinguishable from each other, each one a tiny jungle kingdom of corruption and tropical decay, but it’s been pleasing to discover that each has its own distinct personality – laidback Belize, reserved and polite Guatemala, brash and fun-loving El Salvador. Honduras is the exception, the country without a face; it is, in fact, its very facelessness that is its defining characteristic. But it’s not necessarily a negative trait; for a lot of our stay Honduras plays like a best-of album of the countries visited so far, retaining the raw edge of Guatemala with the rural friendliness of Mexico and the Salvadoran fondness for a good party.

In Santa Rosa de Copan, Adam and I step gingerly into a dimly-lit pool hall in a quest for beer. The place is packed out with old men on stools clutching Salva Vida beers, young men in flannelette shirts and moustaches holding pool cues to their shoulders. All are staring at us through bloodshot eyes. A thick fog of silence and tobacco smoke descends; I can hear my footsteps tap clearly on the dirty tiles as we walk to the bar – and then, as if someone has pressed play, the entire hall erupts into smiles and shouted questions -

“Where are you from?”

“Do you like football?”

“Is it cold in Australia?”

“Do you play volleyball?”

“Can you buy me a beer?”

“Come on, amigo, buy me a beer?” – this familiar Latin friendliness always showing up where it is least expected. Over the shouts we try to order a few beers to take back to the hotel, where we meet up with the girls carrying hotdogs drenched in six sauces, and we sit on the wet balcony over the empty street and salute this new country that is so much like the old ones.

In the morning we follow the garbage truck down to the highway and jump another bus for Copan Ruinas. Adam pops the roof hatch of the bus so that he has room to stand, drawing roars of laughter from the entire bus. The girls do battle with the wandering hands of the cowboys as we stand in the crowded heat. Halfway along a man disembarks at a large sugar mill with a revolver in his hands. The bus driver beeps the horn at him; he slides the gun casually into the back of his waistband and continues walking up the path. A Honduran man spots Adam’s camera and, pointing at it, asks suspiciously, “Are you taking those photos back to America to show your government?”

The screech of macaws overhead as we walk through the great ruins of Copan, their red tails trailing behind them like a plane tugging a banner. The intricate carving of the stelae in the courtyard, the huge heiroglyphic staircase jumbled by archaeologists, the tombs and tunnels, the massive tree roots snaking through the rock and the trees towering above the ruins as conquerors.

The next day we head for the hot springs. We stand on the corner, looking to hitch a ride, eating chip packet after chip packet, until at last a large flatbed truck with a livestock cage attached pulls up. We climb clumsily into the back. The truck groans and shudders around the rough dirt road; we grip the bars until our knuckles are white. Attempts to sit are shortlived as our spines crack against the jolts of the road. As we near the hot springs the driver picks up speed and roars through the jungle. Branches are whipping about the cage and the wind is in our hair and people hoot with laughter as we pass and to be part of this forever we would give almost anything. The hot spring is a small steaming waterfall that dumps scalding water into a creek. A few men are bathing downstream, their bodies covered in soap that floats downstream on the warm currents that are swallowed up in the cold of the brook.

In La Ceiba we are picked up by a mumbling cab driver who tosses our packs in the boot and carries us into the jungle on a rough dirt road for which he has insufficient clearance. After an hour of scraping and cursing he pulls up to a man working at the engine of an old engine and asks for directions.

“It’s three blocks on,” says the man, and turns back to his work.

We look around us, at the endless thick jungle, the rushing river off to our right. What the hell does three blocks mean? The taxi crunches away on the gravel and, three kilometres on, we arrive at our guesthouse.

At the guesthouse, met by the friendly German owner on horseback, we swim off the heat in the half-filled freshwater pool while a large toad hops slowly along the edge and into an adjoining pond.

At noon the next day we gear up for our whitewater rafting trip. Along with us there are two guides – Ryan, a square-jawed American, and Damien, an Irishman with a large black ring piercing his lower lip who refers to everyone as ‘friend’ (as in, “Friend, would you hand me that rope?”). Over lunch we discuss our next destination, the island of Utila. Ryan relates a story that occurred a couple of months ago: there was a theft of drugs from Colombian smugglers passing by the island. The Colombians responded not by interrogating people and trying to recover the drugs, but rather by immediately assassinating the thirty people on the island they knew or suspected to be involved. They made no attempt to recover the drugs stolen. All thirty were killed the same night.

We slip on life jackets and river shoes – too big, with holes in the toes – and trek down the hill to the riverbed. The mighty Rio Cangrejal is running low and the guides, carrying the heavy rafts atop their heads, have already informed us that we will be unable to raft the entire way. The river still looks strong. Large boulders are scattered about. A group of Honduran kids are all playing about on the nearby rocks, all wearing lifejackets. Some of the older ones are carting rocks from the river up the steep bank in rafting helmets.

Ryan teaches us how to angle our swimming to cross a fast current and we reach the other side of the river, haul ourselves up onto a ridge and hurl ourselves off again, falling twelve feet below into the water, the life jackets jolting us to the surface before we have a chance to react. We cross the river again, the current grabbing and pulling, and the guides assist us in climbing the sheer smooth face of a large boulder. We slip and slide upwards, our knees grinding against the rock, as the rope looped around our life jacket tugs at us. From the top, the river stretches out in both directions, littered with boulders that change position each year in heavy rain. We jump into the water from halfway down the boulder, over a lip of rock, and I rise to the surface gasping and trembling, heart pounding.

Finally, we board the rafts. I secure myself as well as possible with my feet wedged under the seats in front and behind me. Toucans are making their insect noises from the trees. We splash water on our faces “for the river karma”. The raft spins and dips, bounces off rocks, rolls down falls. “Forward!” yells Damien, “Hold on! Lean in!”. Erin overbalances and is nearly overboard, but Adam and Dan wrench her back into the boat. After every serious rapid Damien exhorts us to raise our paddles and “rub it up, rub it up!”. A toucan flits from tree to tree overhead.

The final rapid is also the largest; Ryan and Damien are wary of flipping the rafts and force us all to disembark and examine the rapid from the shore before attempting it. Erin and I are the first to go down it, with Damien in the back. Even here, Honduran children in their red life jackets are throwing themselves into the calm eddies to the side.

“Forward!” shouts Damien. We plunge our paddles into the river, straining against the force of the water. The rapid approaches, a thin lane between two boulders. We cannot see the bottom from the top.

“Forward!”

The boulders close in. Our bodies are pistons. The raft begins to plummet.

“Get down!” shouts Damien.

We throw ourselves into the middle of the raft. And for a second there is nothing. Nothing. Just this pale blue sky above and this churning white mass below and the sound of this blood hissing through our veins.

-

Two songs in this episode – we open with the funky “El Animal” by Alto Mando and close with the Khaoticos’ “Luna de Papel”.

IN ANOTHER: little town on Lake Atitlan named Santiago de Atitlan, we find our way up a gravelly path to the shrine of Maximon, the infamous ‘Wicked Saint’, patron of drinkers, smokers, gamblers and prostitutes. Each year at Easter in towns across Guatemala, Maximon does battle with Jesus in the main square; each year Jesus wins, and Maximon must find a new home in the town. Naturally, the Catholic church does not endorse Maximon as a saint – but that hardly affects his popularity. Before the huddled figure of the Wicked Saint are scattered a dozen candles and two towers of whiskey bottles. A burning cigarette hangs from his mouth. To the left of him stands a saint with a skull for a head; to the right are a motley collection of smaller saints, Jesus among them.

Outside, we’re taken under wing by a freckle-faced dental nurse with a thick Minnesotan accent who refers to white people as “our people” and Guatemalans as “their people”, as in, “One of our people got hit by one of their drunken tuk-tuk drivers last night”. We escape to pay for the bus to Antigua but I mangle my Spanish; instead of asking “How much for two people?” I ask “How much for God’s people?” and the driver stares at me, baffled.

The mistake is premonitory: there are two Mormon kids on our bus from Santiago. Neither could be over twenty, though both have “Elder” stitched onto their shirt pocket. They are both pimple-faced, with sharp noses and small eyes, but seem friendly enough. They ask what we are doing, and we tell them to constant interjections of “That sounds fun!” and “Oh, wow! Fun!” from the brown-haired one, who is clearly the leader. We finish our story; he exclaims “Fun!” one more time and then is silent, as his blonde companion takes up the thread of conversation.

“Man, Guatemala is awesome! Right?” he gushes over the rattles of the bus, “The people here are so fun and neat! I think that’s what separates an awesomely crazy country from a not-so-awesome one! Am I right?”

The bus is full with Mayans returning home from market. Above the bus driver are two portraits of Jesus, identical but flipped and facing each other, both looking down as if conferring privately. Two old Mayan women sit across the aisle from us. Their teeth are all akimbo and their hands smell like the coriander they have been picking. We’ve come out of the mountains, and the air is thick and pressing and stale.

Having had her passport stolen in San Pedro, Erin is now in something of a bind – Australia has no embassies in central America, so she needs to travel twenty-five hours on a bus back to Mexico City to obtain a new passport. First though, we catch a chicken bus into the sleazy chaos of Guatemala City to get an emergency travel document from the Canadian consul.

Bus seats in Guatemala are designed for three people, and with half the bus full a man comes and sits next to Erin and I, spreading his jacket over his legs. The seat is too small for me, and as he presses against Erin I am being shoved against the window, a bolt digging painfully into my knee. I push back, and the man grows irritable.

“These seats are for three passengers,” he grunts.

“There are plenty of other seats,” says Erin.

After grumbling to himself for twenty minutes, the man gets up and leaves the bus. Erin grabs her bag from her lap to pay the bus fare – only to notice the long, straight razor slash marking the front. What little money didn’t get stolen in San Pedro has now been removed by the shoving man. Erin has been robbed twice in the space of five days.

Then Erin is away to Mexico and I am back in Antigua, tripping over yet another network of cobblestone streets. Antigua is a very pretty town under the shadow of volcanoes, full of rooftop bars overlooking ruined churches, but it feels as if something is missing from the city; it all comes off as rather bland – but perhaps at this point we’ve simply been spoiled for colonial Spanish towns. Adam and Dan and I all head to the Jungle Party Bar, which is neither in the jungle nor much of a party. Around an open fire out the back a bearded American in a felt hat is holding court with a couple of girls.

“San Francisco used to be pretty rough,” he’s saying, “But since then it’s become pretty gentrified.”

He looks around the fire solemnly.

“Does everybody here know what the word gentrification means?”

Without waiting for a response, he gives us all a definition.

“Oh,” we say politely.

The following afternoon we head out to Volcan Pacaya, photos of which are strung up all over Antigua, showing great red streamers of lava ejecting from the top. In the small village underneath the volcano, hawkers are selling marshmallows to cook over the volcano’s heat; small boys are selling hiking sticks, each one calling out in a broad American accent, “Wanna stick? Is necessary!”

It’s pouring rain in the village and we all buy a brightly-coloured piece of plastic to use as a poncho, patiently sitting through the guide’s overly-forced jokes before embarking up the hill, a long line of plastic-wrapped foreigners. It’s then that the guide drops the news sheepishly: Pacaya has not erupted since May and currently has no visible lava.

But the need to conceal our disappointment is shortlived; after an hour we can see the bowl of the crater, smoke curling in on itself viciously within, and it’s an enthralling vision. The rain has cleared and the view from the ridge takes in three different volcanoes. The ground underneath is gravel of black volcanic rock, crunchy “like Coco-Pops,” Adam observes. We skate down the slippery path, the wasteland  under our feet actually hot to the touch, wisps of steam from the earlier rain dancing and weaving across the land like a fog.

It’s our final stop in Guatemala – a wonderfully surprising country – before we enter El Salvador, and the disparity is marked. Where Guatemala was mountainous, cold, drenched in natural beauty, El Salvador is hot, developed, overpopulated. Where Guatemala’s poverty was crushing, entrenched and conspicuous, El Salvador is a country on the move, an economic tiger. And where Guatemalans themselves were polite and friendly but reserved and often distant – a national character more reminiscent of southeast Asia than of Latin America – Salvadorans are loud and brash and open and fun-loving. The only thing the two countries have in common, it seems, are a bloody history of civil war and a culture of alcoholism undisguised and prominent in every small town.

On the bus to Juayua a line of hawkers stretches from the front seats to the rear and five metres out either door. They are selling pens, chewing gum, cucumbers, super glue, anti-fungal creams, spring onions, unidentifiable red pills; a walking supermarket, a conga line of consumer goods.

Juayua – besides being a ridiculously unpronounceable word – is a friendly town of colourful streets and smiling passersby – but it’s the bright fluorescent light of the first proper supermarket since Mexico that sends us into spasms of joy and we skip down the aisles, piling things into baskets. It’s here that Adam begins his love affair with pupusas – the famous bean-and-cheese pancake of El Salvador – downing almost thirty in three days. The greasy little parcels of goodness draped in pickled cabbage are a constant, beloved companion for all of us throughout our week in the country.

We’re eating at a pupusa joint in town when a drunkard on the street tries to talk to us in broken English; the waitress turns on him suddenly and claps twice, hard, and points at the door without a word, as if he is a stray dog that has wandered into the kitchen.

The next day we catch a bus to San Salvador. Between the pen salesman and the miracle-ointment salesman, a survivor of the civil war boards the bus to beg for change. He is on crutches and has only small black holes where his ears should be; the back of his head is wrinkled and hairless and burnt, a desert stretching from his shirtneck to the top of his scalp and outwards to the two black ear holes. He shouts his plea in broken sentences, raising his shirt to demonstrate the ugly bullet wound on his belly. He hobbles the length of the bus and back to the driver. The driver slams on the brakes and the man overbalances on his crutches but regains his composure, thanks the grinning driver, and disembarks.

The streets of San Salvador have razor wire coiled on top of razor wire, some of it electrified, some at head height. The streets would look pleasant if they didn’t so resemble a prison. The bars and cafes all lie on main roads, full of the stench of traffic and with huge fast food franchises strung in a line around them, Pizza Hut, China Wok, Burger King, Mister Donut, McDonald’s. All the variety and choice in the world.

Erin rejoins us that night with her new emergency passport; together, the next day we head west to El Salvador’s fabled beaches via La Libertad. In Libertad, two men are having a drunken fistfight in the middle of the road, swinging wildly. There is the occasional slap of flesh on flesh but not many punches are landing.

At Playa San Diego we walk out to the beach, a bleak four miles of nondescript black sand, the whitewash churning back wildly for hundred of metres. We wander along the sand to a ramshackle bar, where the overweight, sweating owner rushes to offer us beer. Behind us, a man is passed out at a table with an empty three-litre bottle of rum standing sentry in front of him. A couple of men, clearly drunk, are clinking glasses and laughing loudly in the corner. One is sharply dressed in a white button-down shirt, pressed khaki pants and leather shoes, looking ridiculous in the sand and the heat. He looks sharply at Adam.

“You looking at my shoes?” he asks in a thick accent, lighting a cigarette.

“What? No, no,” stammers Adam, caught off guard.

“Why are you looking at my shoes?” asks the man, staring hard. Suddenly there is a note of aggression and the bar becomes silent. The other man stands slowly and turns toward us. We are a long way from anyone who would care if we were beaten into the ground by a couple of drunken gangsters on a lonely beach in the tropics. Adam stands his ground, holding the man’s gaze.

The tension is only broken when another pair of drunks – one with a horrible, inflamed skin infection across his face and arms – come bowling out of a nearby door, arms around each other’s shoulders, shouting and laughing. The man with the skin infection playfully grabs the well-dressed man by the collar and pushes him backwards over a table. The well-dressed man never loses his cool; he continues puffing on his cigarette as if tolerating a minor annoyance. We take the opportunity to pay our bill and leave.

This uneasiness, this undercurrent of violence, was something we encountered everywhere during our short stay in El Salvador, contrasting sharply with the open-faced friendliness we found to be a standard character trait there. Of all of the war-torn countries we passed through, it was only El Salvador where it felt as though the blood had not yet dried, as if the demons had not quite been put to rest.

Our hostel is a completely different world, a ridiculous wonderland of pools and games and drinks and manicured lawns. We get drunk and try to teach a couple of shirtless American surfers how to play handball, but our arcane system of promotion through the squares baffles them, and they leave us to our game.

The next day we cross back through La Libertad to El Tunco, El Salvador’s most famous beach but, it turns out, strictly for surfers – the beach itself is ugly and pounding and black, covered with rocks and driftwood, the sand muddy and scorching. Adam and I, as we have done several times before and will do several times afterwards, swear up and down that this is the place we will finally learn to surf; but when it comes to our final morning, I complain of an ear infection and Adam claims to be too hungover. We agree to try again in Nicaragua. A man out the front pushes a wheelbarrow full of green coconuts filled with rum. We sit down to have a drink.

The people of El Tunco – all surfers – look straight out of a sports magazine. They’re all bronzed, blonde and fit; they do odd things like go for jogs along the beach or spend afternoons playing beach volleyball, even during happy hour. They’re all terribly nice, each and every one – but they’re also young and rich and good-looking, which are never qualities to be trusted.

-

This video starts off with our favourite Guatemalan ska band, El Tambor de la Tribu, with their excellent “Tu Mujer”. Then it’s El Salvador’s LA, with “Cerveza”, Barry White’s masterful “I’m Gonna Love You Just a Little More, Baby”, the pumping merengue of Alfredo Jose and the Collection’s “El Botecito”, and we finish with “Tu Cuerpo” by Funk Deluxe.

ON THE: road out of Semuc Champey, the truck we are in pulls over at the top of a hill. The view from the hill is spectacular – verdant green valleys; a small, moss-encrusted church – but the hill itself is covered with trash, the refuse of the hostels along the river. A pack of scabby dogs fights over the scraps. Our driver jumps out and dumps a large barrel of waste onto the pile. The dogs jump at it growling, torn toilet paper trailing from their mouths.

We head further west, toward the Ixil Triangle, scene to some of the bloodiest massacres of the civil war. Mayan families drive past crowded into smoking pickups overloaded with furniture, a stove hanging off the end of the tray. I cling tightly to the rails of the roof of the minibus, my ass wedged as firmly into a tyre as can be managed, the rest of me splayed across the assembled luggage. Adam, behind me, clings precariously to the back ladder, which scrapes across the concrete speedbumps. At the top of a pine tree by the side of the road I see a child, eight years old perhaps, standing on a high branch without ropes, calmly cutting firewood.
“Did you see that kid?” I call out to Adam.
“All I can see is your ass,” he shouts.
Across the valley the low white clouds spill softly over the tops of the mountains and slide down quickly and silently, like death.

The clouds billow in over the mountain town of Nebaj, where the blinking red lights of the telecommunications towers provide the only light in the scrambled patchwork of grey monochrome. Here, the team splits up – Dan and Adam off for a three day hike to outlying villages; Erin and I on a day hike, walking up a steep dirt track toward Cocop. A man with a tall brown hat and a machete tied to his belt wants to know why we are walking when we could take the bus. I tell him we need the exercise, but he continues to look baffled.
“Where did you come here from?”
“Australia,” I say, but again he looks baffled, so I repeat it.
“Is that a village?” he asks. I smile.
“Coban,” I say, “We came here from Coban.”
“Ah, Coban,” he says, “It’s hotter there.”

At the village, the foundations of the razed houses are still visible in the paddocks, lilies growing profusely in the houses of the massacred.

The next day we walk another steep dirt track to the resettlement village of Acul. Along the way there is a gang of men working on the road with hoes and shovels. They are older, mostly, and speaking Q’echi. Some of the men wear white panama hats, and they are not working. As we come close the working men turn to us.
“We want water,” they say, reaching out their hands, “It’s very hot, and we have no water. A little water, please.”
Over the hill the track is as steep down as it was up. We pass a woman and some children herding goats up the hill, who stop and stare as we pass.

In the streets of the village an old drunk stumbles toward us, hissing, with eyes wide. In the main street another drunk is passed out, face up, in the middle of the road with the sun beating down. The clotheslines of the village are covered with the red skirts of the women.

While Adam and Dan continue their hike, Erin and I head south to the market town of Chichicastenango. We arrive in the dark, stumbling on the cobblestones through the skeletal city of scaffolding on which the market will be hung tomorrow. At the end of the street a group of women are laughing while they make tortillas, the dough making a damp slap between their hands as they stand over the black hotplate.

In the morning, walls of wooden masks stare down at us. Fabrics and bags and wooden saints. Buckets of chicken feet sit in the sun. The crowd heaves and swells. The shorter Mayans just put their heads down and keep walking, uncaring if they run into someone else, simply ploughing through like tractors in a muddy field, while the rest of us hesitate and are bogged. The church is covered in flowers, and two men are swinging cans of smoking incense in wide circles.

We escape the crowds to a Mayan shrine on a hill on the outskirts of town, marked by a thin plume of smoke. The priest, an old man in thick, black-rimmed glasses, baggy pants of an unpleasant green and a long-sleeve shirt of the same colour, shuffles slowly around the blue-black stone crosses, tending to the several small fires and chanting. The smoke drifts into the pine trees. There are only tourists present. A guide is explaining in German what is happening. A girl twists the focus on her camera. The priest picks up a bottle of whiskey and pours it into the flames. Back in town, the Evangelical churches echo with the claps of believers.

Under the shadow of three volcanoes we catch a boat across magnificent Lake Atitlan to San Pedro de la Laguna. A tout attaches himself immediately and we keep pausing and changing direction in the futile hope that he will leave. He has a cowboy hat and a laminated tag hangs across his chest.
“There is a cheap place over here,” he says.
“Thankyou, but we don’t need your help,” I say. He continues to follow us anyway. We find a room in a hotel run by Eliseo, who has a facial twitch and a desperate, pleading manner. When we have paid him he walks over to the tout in the cowboy hat and, with too much pretence of surreptitiousness, palms a few Quetzals into his hand. The tout strolls up to Erin.
“You want horse rides tomorrow?”
“Piss off! Leave us alone!” she hisses back.
He flinches, a little hurt, and then composes himself and turns to me.
“You want horse rides tomorrow?”

Barely-sketched clouds are suspended over the rugged hills of the lake. Adam and Dan arrive from their hike, full of excited chatter about tamales and teaching village children to fart with their armpits. Adam’s legs are a warzone of scabs and pus from mosquito bites.

In San Pedro we enroll in a Spanish school and organize a homestay with a local family for the week; for the first time in a long time our clothes come out of our packs and onto shelves. Juana, our hostess, is an older Mayan woman with a kind face who wears her long black hair in a ponytail down her back. Her daughter Jade is angular and steely-eyed, with a boyish face that flickers quickly and constantly between wolfish grin and adolescent boredom. She has an attitude typical of every thirteen-year old girl, everywhere -
“You speak very fast,” says Erin with effort, “It’s difficult for me to understand.”
“Yeah, I know,” replies Jade.
Juana works as a lecturer, teaching local women about the rights of women in Guatemala. She tolerates our broken Spanish with grace.

The teacher assigned to Adam and I, Leti, is friendly and sarcastic with a bubbly laugh but is a good and firm instructor who lets us get away with nothing. We sit each afternoon four hours, drinking the free black coffee from the table at the cafe. The light grows dimmer and the air grows colder. By the end of each lesson we are broken, Adam staring sullenly straight ahead and me hemming and hawing, searching the swamp of my brain for useful conjugations. We return home to a stack of homework and our own dispirited faces.

We break up the lessons with some kayaking, slicing through the smooth stillness of the lake. Terraces of vegetable plots tumble down the surrounding hills. A man in a long-sleeved shirt and red underpants tends the land at the shore. The hard reeds stroke our kayaks as we are sucked slowly through the reed bed as if on a conveyor belt. The volcano is stark and close, the silhouettes of trees huddled together like a line of pilgrims climbing to the top.

San Pedro, supposedly famous for its parties, is a fairly subdued place since a mayoral decree earlier this year mandated an eleven o’clock closing time for all bars. But word hasn’t gotten out yet, so people still flood in, and someone inevitably finds a hostel or supermarket still selling alcohol until the wee hours. It’s a good scene of people, including some familiar faces.

There’s the great Norseman Lars, whom we first met in Merida, Mexico – all hair and beard and glasses, telling fantastically drunken stories with a hoarse roaring laugh.
“My Irish friend James,” he says, “I have only insoolted him once [haw, haw, haw]. I said to heem, “You are a British coont!” and he poonched me twice in the head! He was expecting me to fall but I said, “Look at me! James, look at me!” and when he did I bitch-slapped him right in the face! [haw, haw, haw]” He pauses and looks into his beer a minute. “Now come smoke a joint, you Australian coonts! [haw, haw, haw]”. He is holding a polystyrene container with “Viking Food” scrawled across it in thick marker.

Then there’s Cooper, the extremely nice (if kookily New Age) med student from Caye Caulker. We have a few nights of conversation with him before we ply him with alcohol and he finally lets free the batshit-crazy that I always knew was lurking inside, using the word “chakra” three times, “psychic” four, defining “quantum energy” as “when you’re thinking about someone, and then they phone you”, and peaking with, “I don’t know if you guys know this, but practically every movie you’ve seen is real. Contact? That shit really happened. The Exorcist? It’s real.”

One night we are out with a Canadian couple, Jarred and Sarah, and a manic, giggling British teen named Rollo. We’re sitting outside a supermarket, drinking in the gutter, looking out over the dark vastness of the lake, chatting and laughing. The night air is cool and fresh, and we are all having a fantastic night.
Then there is a rustle from the shadows, the slap of feet retreating.
“That was weird,” says Jarred, “That dude just sprinted off.”
We all stare at each other.
Then Erin quietly murmurs, “Huh. My bag’s not there.”
Then chaos. Everybody runs everywhere, shouting. Nobody knows where they should be running or if anybody else does, either. It’s dark and dogs are barking. The thief is long gone; we are too late. With him goes Erin’s passport and bank cards, and the amulet of Saint Christopher, the patron saint of travelers.

Next morning Erin is in tatters. I poke and prod her to leave the house and we make our slow tortured way to the police station. Either gunshots or fireworks resound loudly and suddenly through the streets periodically. A wedding is emerging from the church down from the station. The police officer we speak to is a surprisingly friendly, mustachioed man in unkempt uniform; he takes forever to compile our report but then says, in stilted English, “It has been a true pleasure talking to you both,” when we have finally finished.

To take our minds off the theft we do a walk up to Santa Clara, atop the mountains ringing the lake. Walking back towards San Pedro down the trash-strewn mountain, a tuk-tuk pulls up beside us and offers us a ride. We turn him down.
“Be careful,” he says, “There are many ladrones on the roads.”
“That’s okay,” laughs Erin, thinking he is trying to get a fare, “I don’t have a passport or money anymore. They can’t take anything.”
“No, you misunderstand,” he says with typical Guatemalan courtesy, “I am only giving you advice. I make my living from foreigners coming here and I want to make sure you are safe. Please be careful.”
I thank him. As he buzzes off I take my passport, in its little plastic bag, out of my backpack. I put most of my money into it and shove it roughly down the front of my underpants. When we reach San Pedro it is warm and coated in pubic sweat.

Our last day of Spanish class falls on a Monday, and Adam and I find ourselves feeling a little emotional saying goodbye to Leti.
“We’ll miss you,” says Adam.
“Really? I won’t miss you,” she says, smiling.
“Oh, this is sad,” says Adam.
“No, not for everyone,” replies Leti, “Actually, I’m quite happy to be rid of you. See you never, boys.”

We’re taken aback for a second, but then we smile back. For the first time on the trip, we understand perfectly when someone is making fun of us.

GUATEMALA SHINES: an almost luminescent green as we fling ourselves south through the outskirts of Poptun to Finca Ixobel.

Finca Ixobel is something of a legendary traveler’s hangout started by two Americans – one of whom was kidnapped and horrifically murdered by the Guatemalan military in 1990. His wife continues to run the farm now, overseeing an incredible property that includes a stable of horses, a huge swimmable pond, a kitchen pumping out incredibly delicious food, and caves, forests, mountains and rivers nearby.

But we see very little of the countryside while we are there; rain follows rain throughout the week; everything has the texture and colour of wet tissue paper. An early attempt to defy the drizzle with a horseback ride through the surrounding forest leaves me three days later with no less than thirty cattle ticks protruding their fat little bellies from my legs and chest, each yanked painfully clear by an extremely patient Erin wielding a pair of tweezers with the deftness of a surgeon.

Instead we take the opportunity to take a holiday from our holiday, each of us lapsing into our own world, reading, playing solitaire, bathing in the pale glow of a computer screen, talking to the other travelers passing through – Duncan and Anna and Laura, and especially the two lovely British girls working at the finca, Chloe and Donna.

One night over beers Chloe finds out that I used to work with people with intellectual disabilities, and asks me to come along to the local school for children with special needs to help out for the day. Going back to that work holds little appeal to me, but I can think of no valid excuse not to go, so the next morning I am up at six to walk through the forest with her to town, each of us swinging out anti-dog sticks in low arcs as we walk.

The teachers at the squat concrete school are trying hard but they have very few resources and no training. I sit with a couple of deaf children while they go through page after page of mind-numbing exercises, drawing short diagonal lines in a choice of two colours – red and green (when I try to introduce a blue pencil, I am immediately rebuked by the teacher – “No! They don’t know that colour yet!”. The children have been at the school for a year).

The teaching style is a curious but sadly predictable mix of the inspired and the inept. The teacher working with the deaf children has devised, without any training, a method to teach them to vocalize sounds, which I find very impressive. But when I ask him for the name of one of the boys, he looks at another teacher blankly and they both turn and say “Maybe it’s written on his backpack!” and “Is it written there in his book?”.

Still, it’s an enjoyable day, much of which is spent running in circles around the hazardous playground (think swings held up not by chains or ropes but by lengths of steel hooked together, and see-saws that are not bolted to the ground but sit on large arcs of steel that habitually overturn or shift and crush the toes of nearby children). At the end of it Chloe tells the main teacher that I used to work with adults with intellectual disabilities. He rushes to me with wide eyes.
“Please,” he says quietly, “The government – they give us no training for disabilities. We want to do the right thing but we don’t know if we are doing the right thing or the wrong thing. Please. Tell me. What are we doing wrong?”
I look at him helplessly. I have no answer: everything and nothing. I couldn’t begin to answer the question in English, let alone Spanish. I will the words to come, but they flee before my grasp. I don’t know where to begin. Or where to end. Or what to say at all.

On our last night on the finca, Donna and Chloe open the long-promised bar out by the pond. Another handful of travelers has arrived from Germany, France and Holland, and after a few overly-energetic games of ping pong we convince them to sit down for a couple of rounds of the drinking game Kings. It’s a move designed to emphasize the drinking prowess of Australians, but within two hours Danielle is sick and in bed, I have made an absolute mess of one of the men’s bathrooms, and Erin is contaminating the pond. At three in the morning we stumble out through the dripping foliage and crash into bed, waking up hours later looking and smelling like a pile of dirty clothes. It’s time to leave Finca Ixobel.

The rest of Guatemala spills out before us in a dizzying coil of sublime images. Green pastures dotted with huge ceiba trees standing regally alone in the flat expanses. The sweating tangled limbs of twenty-seven people, two babies and a large turkey in a van built for twelve passengers. Floating down a canyon in a thin drizzle while a raggedly-dressed man with a Bluetooth in his ear paddles the canoe, whistling a sad lament that bounces off the damp canyon walls. The roar of howler monkeys in the trees as small children sell tortillas in plastic bags.

A steaming waterfall atop a natural sulfur spring, 70°C (160°F) at the top, falling to a perfectly hot forty degrees as it tumbles headlong into the cool river below, giving us our first hot shower in weeks and the best we would have for many months, diving and swimming through the hidden caves and tunnels. In Livingston, bright and hot and squalid, two giant crocodiles in dilapidated, unfenced concrete pits in the middle of a children’s playground. Dried fish heaped in piles on the main street in the blast-furnace sun, the smell wafting directly into our gag reflex. A boat to Puerto Barrios at furious speed, gaining air off every wave and almost crushing a flock of seagulls.

A succession of minivans across arid landscapes of orange rock, the road overcome with landslides stretching hundreds of metres. A deserted crossroads; “Be off the road by 4:30,” says the van driver with the childlike scorpion tattooed in blue-green prison ink on his forearm, next to a crude love-heart with corners, “This place is very dangerous. It’s important. Just be off the road by 4:30.” A pair of bouncing, googly-eyed toucans and a small, belligerent jaguar locked in tiny cages outside a crusty hospedaje in Panzos. A pleading drunk chased off by an eight-year old boy swinging a broomstick.

Two straight days of travel in boats, minibuses and in the flatbeds of trucks rolling down steep dirt roads, and we have arrived; Semuc Champey unfurls before us into a snaking river guarded secretively by a valley of caves and thick forest. Our hostel is incredibly situated though devoid of people; it streams down the hillside in a scattering of huts and dorms. We rent some tubes, buy some beers and head for the river for a peaceful hour gliding past kids throwing themselves off rocks and old women washing their clothes by the shore (though the tubes aren’t as stable as we’d hoped; I overbalance and drop my beer in the river seconds after opening it). Adam and Dan jump off the 11m-high bridge that spans the river, falling silently into the depths. Then into Semuc Champey proper, a series of almost fluorescent blue and green pools connected by small waterfalls along the river, where the roiling, heaving whitewater of the main part of the river disappears underground for a time. It’s a tiring day of jumping and diving and swimming and being bitten on the ankles by territorial fish, and it’s not long after the sun goes down across the valley that we make our way to bed.

At two in the morning I wake and try to make my fumbling way to the toilet block down the hill. The place is pitch black, cave darkness, and the dim light of my headlamp is no help. I slip off the path, find my way back on, circle the hostel. My headlamp finally gives a sad little sigh and dies, and I am left now without any idea of where I am. I run into a concrete building, stumble back, step into a mud puddle, slip, and fall into a trench next to the toilet block. And here we are amongst the pristine natural splendour of Guatemala, and I’m sprawled face-up in a ditch in the darkness, covered in mud and mosquitoes, with no means of finding my way back to bed. The stars are bright overhead, and a cool breeze blows up from the river.

-

The tracks in this episode include a special 1917 recording of “Besame (One Step)” by the Central America Marimba Band of Guatemala, as well as “San Valentin” by Linda Morada, El Tambor de la Tribu’s energetic “Me No Faltas Tu”, and the punta piece “El Baila Baila”.

WE PASSED: a few lifeless days in Mexico in what we called “rest and reCubaration”, racing through the markets of Chetumal to stock up on all the bits and pieces lost or worn into the ground along the way. When we began to feel the first flickers of enthusiasm returning, we jumped a bus to Belize, where we were promptly ripped off for $20 at the border post (we had a joke back then that has ceased to be a joke and become something between superstition and fact – that every border crossing in Latin America would end with us being ripped off exactly three times; no more, no less) and switched to a decommissioned American school bus, canary yellow, jangling like a sack of coins, lovely and breezy while moving but stickily suffocating the moment it came to a halt. These, the famous chicken buses, were to become the sole form of transport across Central America. For the main part they were enjoyable but trying to fit Adam into one required some complex body origami.

Belize is an anomaly – a small Latin American country that thinks it’s a Caribbean island, with historical ties to Britain and English as the national language. It has a total population of only 330,000 – to put that in context, El Salvador, which is slightly smaller than Belize, has 7.2 million people – though you’d never know it from sitting on that bus, passing village after village, people crowding up and down the aisle, babbling in their gentle Caribbean accents.

After several hours the bus staggered into the ugly humidity of Belize City, from where we jumped into a boat, gliding across perfect azure waters to the tiny island of Caye Caulker. Half a dozen dreadlocked Rastafarians greeted us at the dock, waiting to guide people off to their guesthouses. We shouldered our packs and wandered up the sand road. A young guy on a bicycle pedalled lazily over to me and the girls while Adam strode on a little ahead.

“Hey mon,” he said to me, smiling, “It seems you have a surplus of women. Would you mind if I borrowed one?”

Caye Caulker used to be only one island until 1961, when Hurricane Hattie quite literally ripped the whole thing in half, in the process giving the island its only swimmable beach. The Split, as it’s known, now prominently features submerged picnic tables and an archipelago of the shattered remnants of a concrete pier sticking up from the water, wobbling underfoot.

We snorkel at the Split, amazed – starfish, stingrays, squid, flounder, dory, angelfish, the collected debris of the hurricane, all within a couple of metres of the shore. Afterwards we sit on the sand with a beer watching the sunset, in front of which a bearded, potbellied Rasta sits on the bow of his fishing boat, talking to us with glazed eyes about the glory of Jah while tossing us fresh coconut flesh retrieved with his machete.

On the way back to our cabin a young man approaches us, smiling – “Man, you’ve got a surplus of women! Would it be okay if I borrowed one?”

The heat of the middle of the day on the island is crippling and we spend much of each day pasted to our bed, face up, watching the arms of the fan spin lazily past. In the night we have a couple of beers, eat some dinner – almost inevitably lobster, everywhere serving lobster, lobster omelettes, lobster burritos, lobster burger, lobster draped in coconut and deep-fried. Then some cocktails – the universally beloved ‘Pantie Ripper’ – and then the long wander up and down the island, looking for a bar full of people. But most nights the bars are empty and when they’re not, the thin vein of quiet hostility that one sometimes detects running through the island bleeds to the surface. On our last night Erin and I are having a drink at a rooftop reggae bar when we’re approached by a skinny Rasta and offered weed.

“No thanks, we’re okay,” answers Erin brightly, but the man turns on her spitefully.

“Don’t speak for ‘im,” he spits, motioning to me, “In dis country de man speak for de woman. De fuckin’ woman don’t control de man. De fuckin’ woman don’t control nothing.”

It’s a typically bright day when we catch the boat back to Belize City. We are walking the crowded streets to the bus station when a man approaches me.

“Man!” he shouts, “It looks like you have a surplus of women -”

I keep walking.

At the bus station we grab some greasy fried conch fritters and grab a rumbling schoolbus west, relaxing in the breeze as the bus blows past field after field scattered with junked cars. As we near San Ignacio, close to the Guatemalan border, a large man taps me on the shoulder.

“Excuse me,” he says gently, “I don’t mean to bother you, but I’m a prison officer here in Belize. Here’s my ID.”

He hands me a card which I grab clumsily, not quite knowing what is going on.

“I don’t mean to bother you,” he repeats, “but it’s about your tattoo.”

I’m wearing a singlet that displays the childish lightning bolt scrawled on my left shoulder.

“We get a lot of gangs here in Belize. All the gangs are from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Mexico but they often end up passing through here.”

With his Caribbean accent he pronounces ‘gang’ as ‘gung’, and for a while I’m not sure if he’s talking about gangs or guns.

“Anyway, the tattoo on your shoulder is the tattoo that white supremacists get in the prisons here. It shouldn’t cause you problems here, but if you’re planning to cross into Guatemala or El Salvador, it could get you into trouble. Some people may even shoot you on sight.”

My mouth has flapped open, but words aren’t coming out.

“I…didn’t know…” I stammer. My tattoo is the design of my favourite record label from New York; I got it because I’m a complete hipster douchebag, not because I wanted to get shot by guys with facial tattoos on the streets of San Salvador.

“I know,” he says kindly, “And I didn’t want to worry you. I’d just cover it up for those countries. And here’s my stop.”

He stands to leave and I thank him profusely. Then we are in San Ignacio, a dull little town where we stay in disgusting, noisy, uncomfortable rooms in a hotel run by a man named Kenny. Kenny is a skinny toothless drug addict who spins us an almighty life story about rising up from the ghettoes of New York to work for Mr Donald Trump himself. He’s quite charismatic at first but as he continues to drink his conversation devolves into the “If my wife ever talks back to me…” garbage that is becoming standard talk in Belize. When we awake in our filthy beds we waste no time in racing to the border.

At the border the Guatemalan official presses me for a ‘border tax’ .

“Could I get a receipt for that?” I ask sweetly.

His eyes harden as he tosses my passport at me.

“Pay it when you leave,” he mumbles.

A minibus through to Flores gives us our first taste of Guatemala, and we’re surprised by how different it is to Mexico – we’d assumed that they would be similar to the point of being indistinguishable. But Guatemala is a country served raw, without condiments. It is dusty and broken and down-and-out, pinched by that very particular poverty of a small country in a poor location in the world, the kind of hardship that you just know will last a very, very long time.

We spend a couple of unremarkable days in Flores while Adam recovers from a bout of sickness that had plagued him since our first day on Caye Caulker, wandering around the bright houses and cobblestone streets of the pretty island town, sitting on the seawall over sunken wooden boats watching tuk-tuks pass back and forth over the causeway.

At the first sign of improvement from Adam we physically manhandle him onto a minibus bound for Tikal, the great Mayan ruins that lie eighty kilometres to the north of Flores. It is a long, peaceful ride through some beautiful countryside and excitement begins to build among us for the ruins. Unfortunately, upon arriving in the carpark the lip of my old, ratty shoe catches on the stair of the minibus, ripping the entire sole off. I’m left with just a sock on my right foot to explore a jungle-hidden ruin several square kilometres in breadth.

We do some fast DIY repairs with shoelaces and hair elastics and, though my shoe squishes and squelches and catches on every second rock throughout the day, it’s not enough to spoil the majesty of Tikal. The ruins here overshadow those of Palenque in every way – bigger, more numerous, more intricately designed, and steeper – so steep in fact that Temple I has been closed to tourists after two unlucky souls tumbled down the stairs to their deaths. This hasn’t been enough to encourage the authorities to rope off the tops of the other temples, which remain distressingly vertigo-inducing – particularly Temple V, 187ft high, where everybody digs their fingernails into the temple wall behind them, the Guatemalans screaming as they descend the steep ladders to the jungle floor.

It’s stunning that in such a massive site there are so few tourists – with all the hype around it, we had expected some shoulder-to-shoulder action. But most of the day is spent wandering blissfully by ourselves with only a handful of people in sight. Even more amazing is the constant stream of wildlife – spider monkeys, hummingbirds, the raccoon-like coatamundis wandering in packs with upturned, monkey-like tails; the odd pacas, some freakish Dr Moreau combination of a wallaby and a pig, about the size of a cat, clicking and galloping through the undergrowth.

The next day we caught a bus south, central America hanging below us like a thread. I had always been cautious about the idea of traveling through central America, worried by the perpetual stories of crime and corruption, wondering whether it would throw up only second-string editions of sights we would be able to see further south. Now we had already stood at what was supposed to be her most spectacular site, and I wondered whether we’d peaked too early.

But dead places can never compete with those of the living. The next few months would throw forth more moments of substance and beauty than I could ever have hoped for. The bus whistled south. Outside the jungle was singing.

-

Only two songs in this episode – the fabulous “Coconuts”  by Harry Nilsson, from his masterful Nilsson Schmilsson album, and “Todo Se Pagara”, by Guatemalan ska heroes Malacates Trebol Shop.

BUT BACK: to the story. Back to the beginning.

Havana is a beautiful city to walk around. Crumbling buildings pour into narrow streets full of 1950′s convertibles, old couples in home-made horsecarts, teenagers playing wallball. Old ladies drop baskets attached by ropes over their balcony, lowering them to the street where a waiting salesman places a newspaper inside. Waves crash loudly over the seawall and onto the street. As soon as we arrived, young men approached us, seemingly spontaneously, to help us find a casa for the night. We strode together from house to house, each one phoning the next one down the streets, nobody with a spare room except an old couple on the fourth floor of a building.

Cuba does not have hostels – choices for accommodation are restricted to expensive government-run hotels or casas, literally people’s houses with a spare room that the government has authorised to be let out to travelers. It’s a system with benefits and drawbacks as a traveler – you get a good glimpse into people’s lives, and your Spanish improves immensely; but you also miss out on the community of other travelers, swapping tips and stories, building that collective excitement which is the greatest quality of hostels.

Of course the boys helping us to find these casas were after more than just thanks; but we’d been so long in the secure bubble of Mexico that we’d lost our instincts for getting hustled. It took us a couple of hours to lose the first hustler but we found ourselves immediately in the company of another, then another. And another. Always approaching with such a confusing amalgam of charm and hostility, always swaggering and standoffish, hard-eyed and smiling warmly – a mix that had us constantly off-balance, caught wrong-footed.

And, foolishly, we let it get to us. Tensions rose and tempers flared – mine, mostly. Inevitably on the days we felt good, open, enthusiastic, something would come along to spoil it, so we settled mainly on a slightly bitter melancholy. “I miss Mexico” became a regular, ridiculous refrain. In a market behind the massive, stately capitolio building, a large musclebound Cuban approached and offered us the usual fake cigars; we politely declined with the detached “No, thankyou” that becomes your automated response in places where items are constantly being thrust at you. His eyebrows rose in fury. “If you are tired, go back to your own country!” he yelled in English, “Go home to bed! In Cuba there is no room for the tired!”

I remember getting a haircut in Havana. The barbershop was nothing more than the grimy hallway of a building, people constantly passing through, remarking on my blond hair. The barber, a widely-smiling forty-year old, passed a bottle of rum to Erin and I, then took a couple of swigs for himself before pulling out his scissors. He joked with us, teasing me about my receding hairline. His father came through, kissed Erin on both cheeks, and both father and son had some more rum. The barber’s eight-year old son came out and told us about his day at school. “Wow. Wow. Wow,” the barber kept saying, watching my hair fall to the floor. “Wow,” he said, “Wow,” as he sliced my face open with the straight razor. We were having such fun that I didn’t much care. Then he fell into conversation with a small man behind me. “Do you understand?” he murmured, but I didn’t realize he was talking to me, so I didn’t respond. They both waited a moment, and then the small man said, “How much are you going to charge him? Five CUC?”
“No.”
“Ten? Fifteen?”
“Twenty,” said the barber, and they both laughed.
I told Erin what I’d overheard, and we decided to try and pay in pesos rather than CUCs, but he threw them back at us.
“No! Cuban money is fuck you!” he yelled in English, “Is fuck you!”
Erin was taken aback but I’m not sure he meant to be that offensive – I think he was trying to insult the currency rather than us. We eventually wrangled him down to ten – still far too much, especially considering I’d had my face sliced open. We left without speaking. As was so often the case in Cuba, all the bonding was meaningless, all the ties that bind were severed as soon as money entered the picture.

It felt like we tried so hard in Havana, but perhaps we didn’t try hard enough at all. “Some places were not so good, but maybe we were not so good when we were in them,” as Hemingway wrote. We weren’t ready for it and it swept over us like a great wave. Whenever we tried to go out at night, all we would find were tourists, buying overpriced drinks, eating shitty food, listening to Buena Vista Social Club knockoffs, jinoteros circling like sharks. Where were the Cubans themselves? Where did they dance? Where did they drink? Where did they laugh and tell stories and fight and fuck?

Perhaps they were just in their lounge rooms. Because that, when all was said and done, was where we had our best times in Havana. After a couple of days in various casas we’d moved in with Amelia and her son Roman, and suddenly everything was different. Amelia, who shouted at us for the first two days until Roman explained to her that shouted Spanish isn’t any easier to understand than regular Spanish, would stay up nights talking politics or music, would cook us amazing feasts and turn down any compensation. Roman, young and charming, would give us salsa lessons all night, teach us card games, dance inappropriately with his mother, tell us about his dream of starting a dance school. They were good, honest, fun people, and they kept our faith in the country alive. Across the street, on the opposite balcony, a large family danced every night until well into the morning. On the street below, amps would be set up and people would dance and throw back bottles of rum. Every lounge-room we passed on the street would always have at least one person dancing in it, smiling at the roof with a glass of rum in hand.

And yet we would leave that house, that street, every night, in search of something else. And we would return exhausted and defeated. We were locked in a complex salsa with Havana. We stepped toward her; she ducked away to the side. We spun to meet her, but she writhed away, twirling under our arm. Always smiling but never speaking. Always touching, but never coming to grips.

Our taxi out of Havana was the kind of vintage car people pay thousands for in Australia. Our driver was smiling and friendly; he took us to a series of out-of-order ATMs and shrugged helplessly – “We have so much in Cuba,” he said, “and so little of it works.”

In Santa Clara we ate some of the most disgusting food I’ve ever come across, but at the cost of two cents per hamburger, thirteen cents per pizza, we gorged ourselves anyway. Horse and carts are the primary form of public transport in Santa Clara and we caught one out to the bus station, the driver yelling out “Caballo” in a low ragged voice as he whipped the scrawny horse. The bus station was a seething, shouting mass of human bodies. We fought our way into an office.
“We’d like to buy tickets to Trinidad for tomorrow,” said Adam.
“Hmm. I can’t sell you tickets, but I can put you on this waiting list for seats.”
“When do we find out if we got seats?”
“When the bus arrives.”
“What if we don’t get seats?”
“Then I’ll put you on the waiting list for the next day.”
This was the same story at every bus station we would visit in Cuba. None of them had so much as a computer, just a harassed man or woman in the Via Azul uniform being pressed by mobs of people to get their names on a handwritten list.

On the way to Trinidad there was a problem with the bus and we got stuck for two hours in Cienfuegos. We watched the great overcrowded orange public buses go past – they looked like prison buses, like livestock trucks, limbs emerging from every opening.

The first vision of Trinidad was a long line of touts blocking the exit to the bus station. The bus’ passenger list had been leaked and now our names were bandied about hopefully – “Erin!” “Danielle!” “Adam!” “Lachlan!’ – we managed to squeeze through the mob. But outside, Trinidad was a pretty colonial town, filled daily with confused-looking wandering mobs of white tourists who would all fill the stairs of the Casa de la Musica every evening, dancing salsa and drinking mojitos. On the streets old men tried to sell us fake cigars; in the museum old ladies shadowed us, trying to offload postage stamps decorated with the serious face of Che Guevara.

Trinidad’s nightlife was excellent but again, geared directly at tourists. We did the rounds of clubs, attempted the occasional salsa and then sat sheepishly to watch the real dancers. On the last night we visited a nightclub set in a great cave. The music was awful, the crowd gyrating amongst the exposed rock, and we went wild, letting go of everything, dancing ridiculously. In the early morning, leaving the club seriously drunk, Adam and I sprinted against each other down the steep dirt and cobblestone roads to town, feeling the rush of blood battle against the cool of the night air. It was the beginning of an unspoken agreement between all of us to just get over it and start enjoying ourselves.

Twelve long hours followed on a bus to Santiago de Cuba, the former capital. Another horrid scramble of a bus station, desperate faces pressed up against the glass windows in the darkness.

But in the morning we were happy to find a very pretty city laid out in front of us, a beautiful cathedral overlooking the central plaza. We were hounded about the cathedral by an incredibly persistent beggar (“Cae le,” I hissed, “Cae le!“, convinced this was something we’d learnt during the Spanish class in Guanajuato to mean “Get out of here!” or “Go away!”. Later, doing our second Spanish course in Guatemala, I would find out that it was actually something I’d made up in my head. It meant nothing at all, except maybe “It falls”. Naturally, the beggar did not respond.)

We wandered down to the waterfront and watched the jellyfish float gently past. Another vintage car pumping reggaeton raced us to the very impressive Spanish fortress out on the point, where we took shelter from the superb heat in the coolness of the dark stone rooms, stacked with cannonballs.

Santiago was a lovely town to wander, full of energy and food stands selling deep-fried somethings for a few cents. We retired to the rooftop of a swank hotel with Montecristo cigars in hand, watching the sun’s late light fall on the angels of the cathedral. Below, in the plaza, a crowd started to form and swell. A dense jumble of African rhythms scaled the building to reach our ears, and before I knew what was happening we were on the street, in the midst of it, whilst troops of kids performed elaborate routines and women dressed as devils spun like dervishes. It was incredible to watch, the crowd pressing and cheering and falling back. For a moment I had the realization that this is what Cuba is – not a constantly pleasant, friendly place like Mexico, but a tense, combustible stormcloud that occasionally bursts into epic thunder of such proportions that there is no recourse but to fall back in awe.

And then the storm passed, the crowd cleared out of the plaza, and we went to eat another awful dinner and get hounded by more jinoteros.

In the morning we went to the train station. We were keen to take the train back from Santiago to Havana in a few days, but again we got the runaround. “Buy your tickets on the other side of the building,” the woman at the ticket office said.

“Buy your tickets from the office in town,” said the woman at the other side of the building.

“Tickets don’t get sold until the day the train leaves,” said the man at the office in town.

We got on a bus to Baracoa instead, rolling through the hillside. The road was a series of hairpin turns, and coming around one my guitar flew out of the luggage rack and hit the driver in the head. The neck of the guitar cracked and, though we would later make attempts at repair with duct tape, shoelaces and superglue, it was the beginning of the end for Charlie the guitar.

Baracoa struck us as the most immediately appealing of all the places we’d been in Cuba. With a stiff breeze coming off the sea, the place just felt far more laidback, more welcoming. We watched teenagers playing baseball at the stadium, barefoot in the dirt, enjoying the crack of the wooden bat as the local running team did laps of the field, stopping halfway round each lap for pushups.

We found ourselves a breezy casa near the water run by an inevitably shirtless older man named Orlando. The food we ate at his house – shrimp cooked in coconut milk and spices, moist tender chicken, rice and beans – was not only the best we’d had in Cuba (that would only barely qualify as a compliment), it was some of the best we’d had the entire trip.

Newly invigorated, we set ourselves the challenge of climbing El Yunque, the great anvil-shaped mountain that overshadowed the town. It was a tough climb, past piglets snorting in the mud, giant slugs, up and up, past ramshackle stalls where we swallowed grapefruit after grapefruit. At the top, despite the distance, we could still hear the distant strains of reggaeton floating up to us from the ranger’s hut as we gazed out at Cuba, looking as enticing and inscrutable as ever.

We got back into Santiago at night and asked a couple of guys to give us a lift to the train station via an ATM in the plaza. Instead they took us on a tour of backstreet ATMs shrouded in darkness. None of them worked. This process took nearly an hour, and by the end of it we had reached the end of our tether. “Just take us to the ATM we asked for!” barked Adam. They ignored him.

Eventually we made the train station, only to find that there were no trains that day. Defeated, exhausted, we got back into the cab and returned to the bus station. We paid the cab drivers twice what we had agreed upon, but still they wanted more – “for going to so many ATMs.” Adam and I blew up and the scene quickly degenerated. It is exceedingly difficult to yell passionately in a language that is not your own but we did our best and stormed off in the most dramatic fashion possible when you’re carrying large backpacks and wearing flip-flops.

And so came our last night in Cuba, wedged into a tiny seat on a cheap Chinese bus, while the obese man behind Erin snored with such force that eventually the entire bus banded together to wake him. We rode all through the night, all through the morning. At eleven, the bus blew a tyre and we were forced off, passing out in the yellow grass in the soft sunlight.

By the time got back to Havana we would have spent over twenty-four hours straight on buses. And I would never have thought, twelve months ago, that going back to Mexico could feel so much like going home.

CUBA IS: different. Different, I think, from most any country in the world. Certainly different from anywhere I’ve ever been. And with more than two months of distance from the country, that’s still all I can say about it. Not good, not bad, not fun, not awful. Just different.

So I’m not going to try and write about our time there just yet; I’ll save it for next episode. Perhaps I’ll have a better idea of what happened then. Let’s talk about the country instead. Bear in mind this is based primarily on personal observations and conversations with Cubans during a sixteen-day stay in the country, hardly enough to qualify myself as any sort of authority on the place, but since I’m a fan of passing off wild baseless allegations as fact, here we go.

Two things about Cuba.

The first is that, amazingly, Cuba works. Somehow, despite the economic embargoes of the most powerful superpower in the world and a distinct lack of allies or trade partners or natural resources or even any obvious revenue streams, Castro has fashioned a country based on completely different principles from anywhere else on the globe, and it works. Fascinatingly, Castro has actually succeeded in creating a class-free society. While it’s very possible to become rich in Cuba by exploiting loopholes – most notably by having a husband or other relative outside Cuba sending remittances – the fact is that there’s nothing to spend it on. There are no country clubs in Cuba; no privileged golf courses. There are very few expensive restaurants, and none are terribly nice. There are no gated communities or landed estates (*cough* except for those owned by Castro and close associates *cough*), no high fashion, no gentleman’s clubs (all these assertions are becoming less true as tourist dollars and infrastructure flood the country, but I’ll come to that soon). There are nice cars, sure, but they’re all sixty years old and besides, even the poor people have them. There’s rum, yes, and fine cigars, but again: everyone has access to them. Everybody has a house – a house, mind you; not a lean-to, not a shanty with a piece of corrugated iron for a roof, not even a fibro cottage, but a real, no-fooling house. Everybody has food, whether or not they have money. Everybody has access to world-quality medical care. Everybody has access to a full and free education, including university, with some of the best teacher : student ratios to be found anywhere – far better than the USA or Australia or Britain. Everybody has access to free public transport. With no way of differentiating itself from the masses, the upper class of Cuba becomes invisible and ceases to exist. It sounds incredible, but there it is.

Other Communist nations were infamous for suppressing or destroying existing architecture, art and religion, but by refraining from that practice (admittedly out of pragmatism, at least in the case of architecture: Cuba simply couldn’t afford the construction of new buildings) Fidel not only avoided popular uprisings but actually supported in the creation of a thriving literature, film, dance and music scene, which is now the main basis of its tourism. And Cuba’s very poverty and isolation has led to it being named by the WWF as the most sustainable country in the world – indeed, the only nation declared to have sustainable levels of development – as every single existing resource must be conserved and recycled as long as is possible. So it’s still possible to walk around in Havana surrounded by seventy-year old buildings, coughing on the syrupy smoke of the ’56 Chevy’s grumbling past, and not see a single advertisement, anywhere, for anything; a single plastic wrapper; a single four-wheel drive. Which, to me, describes a certain type of bliss.

But.

The other thing about Cuba, though, is that, well, it just doesn’t work. Nothing about the country works. The country lurches ineptly from food shortage to food shortage. Sure, you get your bread free, but you have to spend half your day lining up for it. One of the classic absurdities of Cuba is watching everyone get their two free scoops of icecream from Coppelia’s in seconds but wait most of the day for bread. A little while ago Cuba defaulted twice on payments for shipments of rice from Vietnam, so for a month the country had to go without its staple grain.

Sure, you get your education free, but if you’re not planning on becoming a doctor or teacher, so what? We met people with four, five and six degrees but no job. Studying engineering for twenty years isn’t going to mean that Cuba will actually have any money or resources to pursue any engineering projects.

Sure, the country has a public transport system, but it’s been imported directly from a Kafka novel (by which I mean China) – turn up to buy your tickets, sorry they’re not available here, go across town. Turn up across town, sorry they’re not for sale today, come back Wednesday. On Wednesday, they put your name on a waiting list and tell you to come back to see if you got a ticket. When should you come back? Five minutes before the bus leaves! What if I don’t get a ticket? Then go back to the ticket office across town!

Sure, the music scene is famous but (shocking truth) it’s largely stale, suffocated by a lack of influence from the outside world and by the overwhelming shadow of the Buena Vista Social Club.

But most of the problems stem from tourism. By my understanding of the psychology of Communism, when the people have the incentive to amass money removed from their lives, they are supposed to respond by focusing instead on supporting their family, community or homeland, or involving themselves in art, or simply in working for its own benefit. For most Cubans, this continues to be the case.

But tourists are streaming into the country, bringing with them wads of Pesos Cubanos Convertibles (CUC’s), Cuba’s second currency, with which one can purchase high-end electronic devices and new Chinese cars and computers and nights in fancy hotels and all the other utterly trivial garbage without which the Western world would fall, suffocating, to its knees. And some Cubans, who don’t feel particularly passionate about their community or their homeland or salsa or rolling cigars for eight hours a day but who do quite like the idea of staring at the flashing LED’s of a new car stereo,  are keen to get their hands on them. So they hustle. Put on the charm, show the tourists a thing or two, get your meals paid for, drinks paid for, and a few bonus CUC’s at the end. You need to be a little dishonest, sure; sometimes you may need to steal outright. They’re just foreigners, right? What have foreigners done for us lately, compañero?

And they’re right. Why should a guy who has had to go without his whole life not skim a little off those who have lived their lives in luxury? It’s not as if they’re robbing them poor; just a little here, a little there.

But then some Cubans have a lot of CUC’s, so maybe you can hustle a little off them, too. Or maybe you should just take their car stereo outright. Greed begets cruelty, dishonesty begets corruption.

And that’s how Cuba will die, the leaves falling one by one from the tree, slowly shuffling down the bright green path, following the rest of the world into its gaudy, neon-lit grave under the tombstone engraved: WHOEVER DIES WITH THE MOST TOYS, WINS.

“Sometimes he thought it was precisely because he was an atheist that he didn’t read anymore. Not reading, it might be said, was the highest expression of atheism or at least of atheism as he conceived of it. If you don’t believe in God, how do you believe in a fucking book?¨

2666 is a lot of things, but isn’t a book for casual reading.

The final, unfinished work by celebrated  Chilean author Roberto Bolaño, published posthumously in 2004, it is a study in evil, in death, in degeneration – all set around the murders of three hundred poor women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico (here given the name ‘Santa Teresa’). One of the most shameful chapter’s in Mexico’s often bloody history, the series of seemingly motiveless murders were still ongoing at the time the book was written and remain to this day unsolved.

Although born in Chile, Bolaño spent much of his short life in Mexico, and two of his other novels, Amulet and The Savage Detectives, are set in Mexico City (at least partly). But 2666, which consumed the last five years of his life as he knew death to be approaching, is his masterpiece. Although unfinished, it is still a 900-page behemoth (1,100 in the Spanish edition) ranging from Mexico to WWII-era Germany and Western Europe.

Divided into five sections, the book concerns a varied bunch of characters, most of whom have little or no interaction with each other but who are nevertheless drawn into the vortex around Santa Teresa and the murders. The book has a gnawing sense of impending apocalypse, though revelations and resolutions are thin on the ground. Stories bleed into each other and out into the ether; like a lot of great novels it feels like a world you could lose yourself in – but unlike a lot of great novels it feels not self-contained but limitless. Everything in the book is in a perpetual state of decay; evil occurs not for any specific reason except that there is nothing to prevent it occurring.

In the book’s most harrowing section, “The Part about the Crimes”, Bolaño mercilessly describes the murders in bare sketches, lining them up, one after the other. The sense of lurking menace, the lingering shadow of the black Suburban on the road outside – the reader is torn between nausea and a desperate attempt to piece together clues.

But any such attempt will find many pieces missing. Above all, 2666 is a mystery, a question without an answer. Even the number of the title itself is mentioned nowhere in the novel – though it is mentioned, very briefly, in Amulet, where a road in the capital “looks like a cemetery in the year 2666.” Although his journal may yet shed more light on the book, Bolaño’s death from liver failure (possibly relating to heroin abuse) in 2003 likely means that the answers, like the identities of the criminals in the real-world murders, will fall forever into obscurity.

Bolaño has provided us with something, though: a book to believe in.

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2666 is available from Amazon here.

Anybody interested in reading more about the real-life murders in Ciudad Juarez should start here.

IT WAS: late when we reached Tulum after a long day of buses, and after tossing our belongings into our tiny bungalow, we sat down at the bar, curled our toes in the sand, and ordered a shot of mezcal.

It was two days before Christmas, and the first time any of us had been on the Caribbean. Adam ordered us another mezcal.

Several hours later, we found ourselves wobbling over the dunes to the beach, the powdery white sand stuck to our feet. The full moon illuminated the long stretch of beach, the gently lapping waves, the yachts bobbing softly offshore, and we stood and gazed in awe at our first view of that famous sea.

We stripped off our clothes and jumped in to the warm luscious water. We lazily stroked out to a nearby boat, hauled our bodies over the edge, and flopped like dead fish to the floor, our bits and pieces flapping about palely in the gleam of the moon.

After about ten minutes we decided that lying naked in someone else’s cramped, uncomfortable boat wasn’t as much fun as we’d hoped, so we rolled back over the side, the water swallowing us. It was at this point that I realized how much I’d drunk; the lights on the shore blurred all around me and voices seemed to come from all angles. I lost all my bearings and began to flail about in a panic. Only after I’d resigned myself to a watery death did I notice that I was actually thrashing about in knee-deep water. I stood up gingerly and made my way to the dark pile of our clothes further up the beach.

About halfway to the clothes a pair of headlights turned on us from further up the beach and a police car made a slow pass in the sand. As we started to quicken our pace, the police car made a wide turn and came straight for us. We fell over in the desperate rush to put some undies on, Adam making the entire run back to the bungalow with his boxers held loosely in front of him.

Tulum, and by extension Christmas, floated by in a drunken montage of flash frames. Our bar atop the small table in our bungalow, stocked with the finest liquor the local Super Che supermarket had to offer. Waking on Christmas Day with our heads in agony, mumbling our “Merry Christmas” to each other and grudgingly accepting our presents before heading back to bed. Shopping at the Super Che, ostensibly for roast chicken and vegetables, instead showering the cashier with cigarette packets and litres of cheap rum. Wrestling at the bar, Erin sitting on my head screaming “How do you like SAND?!” while shovelling handfuls of sand into my screaming mouth. Waking up, all of us, covered in bruises that turned purple and black in hours, my ears blocked with sand for three days.

On Boxing Day we rose like Lazarus to see the local Mayan ruins built hard up against the beach. In a stellar location, the ruins themselves weren’t terribly impressive and matters were made worse by the fact that they were thick with a crowd of imbeciles. One American girl of around twenty-four to her friends: “So, do you guys know when these were built? I heard it was in, like, the year minus two thousand.”

When our brains began to hurt, we jumped a bus to our final town in Mexico: Cancun, the arsehole of the Americas, where all the retarded capitalist genius of the US floats down the Gulf to wash up limply on Mexico’s golden shores. An utterly soulless, life-sucking assortment of mega-hotels and bars catering to date-rapists and idiots, Cancun was so utterly unlike the rest of Mexico that it seems almost insulting to mention it in the same sentence.

We knew it would be like that. But we expected, at least, that one could have something of a good time in Cancun, so long as you kept your standards low. But the city was empty, a ghost town of neon signs and MTV advertisements and humvees and special appearances by washed-up porn stars and triple-price drinks.

We had expected Cancun to give us a chance to recap and reminisce. To remember everything Mexico had been to us, for four months, all the wonderful people, all the wonderful places. Dancing in lounge rooms until early morning, sleeping under the stars around a campfire, hiking to the tops of temples built more than a millenium ago, talking drunken politics on streets that had seen assassination, revolutions, wars. Getting lost in the wilderness, getting pushed about by cops on the streets, diving into sinkholes, lying stoned on beaches for weeks, roaming deserted hills on horseback, knocking back tequila snuck to us gratis by waiters eager to swap email addresses, watching religious processions pass us in the street or on a steep hillside, rockets exploding in the air above. We wanted a chance to sit and think about how simply and utterly wonderful Mexico is, full from top to bottom with wonders – not least of all the people, who were almost without exception a people awash with a remarkable passion and intelligence, bursting with laughter and warmth, a full-blooded people, a people of real complexity and depth.

Instead we holed up in a hostel on the edge of town, where we could at least get some food that looked vaguely Mexican, and counted down the hours until our flight to Cuba.

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No Mexican Christmas would be complete without Jose Feliciano’s “Feliz Navidad” on repeat, so it’s only right to start this episode with that. We’ve also got “El Gran Salto” by Los Ginkas and the cheesy Cancun-ready “Cual es tu Rock?” by Los Latigos. Rounding off our sum-up we use a couple of old favourites – Disco Ruido’s “Mrs. Love” and possibly my favourite track from this trip, “Cumbia” by the Mexican Institute of Sound.

Thanks to Club Fonograma for helping us out with tunes during our Mexican odyssey – Mexico’s music scene is thriving, despite the fact that you can theoretically travel the length of the country and hear nothing but that blasted “We Speak No Americano” song. We highly recommend that people get into some of the bands that are coming up – particularly Jovenes y Sexys, Maria y Jose, Hello Seahorse!, Piyama Party, Chikita Violenta, Carla Morrison and XYX. Thanks for the memories Mexico!

IN THIS: section, we’ll be bringing you music, films, recipes, games and other bits and pieces we find during our travels.

Queuing up is a horrible reality of life. Queuing for the bank, queuing at the supermarket, queuing for the bathroom – or queuing for a quick torta and horchata! In Mexico, where people have their priorities sorted, queues are almost always people lining up for some type of food or drink: a plate of tacos, a quick huareche on the go, or a huge horchata. In Mexico when you see a queue one thinks “That place must do good horchata”!.

Horchata is the starchy, cinnamon-flavoured white rice drink that Mexicans drink by the bucket load – literally. Served cool over ice, horchata commonly comes in serves of up to a litre. Refreshingly good on a hot day, it makes the prefect drink or snack and is everyone’s first choice for something to drink in Mexico and is available on practically every corner.
1. You’ll need to grab the following to make your horchata: 1 cup uncooked white rice, 1 cup milk, 1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract, 1/2 tablespoon ground cinnamon, and 1/2 cup white sugar.

2. Put the rice in a blender with four cups of water and blend it until the rice starts to break up – about 45 seconds or so. Leave the mixture to stand for four hours or overnight.

3. Take the mixture and pour through a strainer, reserving all the liquid in a jug. Discard the rice.

4. Throw in the milk, cinnamon, sugar and vanilla and stir thoroughly.

5.  Serve over ice with a sprinkle of cinnamon on top.

Voila! There you have it, horchata. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have over the last four months. Salud!

Erin.

IT WAS: on the bus from San Cristobal de Las Casas to Palenque that I finally had my breakdown.

Almost everybody has a traveler tantrum, given enough time – alone among us, I have not seen one from Danielle, but I’m sure it’s coming – and the odd thing is that they generally don’t come when things are at their worst, but just when things are vaguely irritating – such as this time. Sure, the bus had delayed an hour at the station; yes, it was pulled over by the cops after half an hour for a problem with its registration and had to sit by the side of the road for forty minutes; and okay, it then sat at some little ratshit town for over an hour while the driver had two dinners and half a pack of cigarettes. But none of this was exactly extraordinary in Latin America, and the others suffered stoically through it as normal. Not me, though; I boiled and raged inside, feeling as if I were going to explode, until, while the bus driver stood outside with his twelfth cigarette, I burst from my seat, shoved roughly past Erin, yelled “I’m getting off this fucking thing!”, and then dramatically stomped down the aisle. The effect of this was slightly dampened when I smacked my head into the television monitor that hung from the ceiling and tumbled, sprawling, into the laps of the middle-aged couple to my right.

We eventually pulled into Palenque station at about 1am, grabbed some late-night tacos and fell blissfully into our beds. I, however, missed my bed, hit another television set, and sliced my head open. After wiping the blood off, I held a sock to my head to stem the bleeding, and tried to sleep. Four and a half hours later, the aerobics classes started pumping their music next door. We pulled ourselves together, the sock stuck fast to my hair, to face the muggy smoggy morning of Palenque Town. Things had not gotten off to a good start.

But the ruins at Palenque could make even a sleep-deprived, emotionally-drained, critically-injured doofus swoon. They are simply majestic. Palenque rose to be one of the most important cities of the Maya about 1400 years ago, under the brilliantly-named emperors Sun Shield and Jaguar Serpent II. It fell into ruin, along with most of the Mayan world, roughly 1100 years ago, and was only rediscovered in the mid-18th century. Now the white stepped temples  lie in the midst of thick jungle with the terrific Jurassic Park roar of howler monkeys in the trees and thick ribbons of ants crossingthe paths. There are tunnels and tombs and temples upon hills that look out across the entire site, plus – of course – the mandatory collection of hawkers selling every variety of the tacky and wooden that can fit on a blanket. But unlike a lot of the famous ruins, it’s still possible to find a bit of peace and quiet to sit and let the whole place just roll itself around in your head.

We returned to the expansive grounds and jungle pool of our hostel very satisfied. Pavel, the Czech student with whom we’d gone biking in San Cristobal, arrived that afternoon. Back in San Cristobal he’d told us that he had organized to hire a car further on in Merida, and offered to share it with us to drive around the Yucatan. We’d enthusiastically agreed; Pavel, always impeccably dressed with his trademark white trilby perched on his head, was a fun guy to hang out with, a good talker and a good traveler. After he’d roped up his hammock we headed down the long dark dirt road to the El Panchan compound, where, rumor had it, some good Italian food awaited us by the river.

The dirt road was long and lit only by the flicker of occasional fireflies, and we were in good spirits, joking about in the dark. But at some point during the dinner Erin became terrifically sick, and so, while the others sat and watched a Peruvian band play, we began the long tortuous road back, stopping every so often so that Erin could let fly into the surrounding jungle. By the next morning, Adam had joined her in the casualty ward, and we spent a long day of sitting with glum expressions by the pool, waiting for a bus to take us away.

So. Another bus. Another sleeping pill. Another seat not quite long enough to stretch in. Another eight hours, gone. At 5am we pulled into Merida, and sat outside our closed hostel in the steely half-dawn.

Merida was a town that passed us by without comment. No bars, no restaurants. The only museum worth visiting was inside a bank. It had a lovely main square and the streets were nice but the Christmas season was upon everyone and the streets were thronged with pushy shoppers. Pavel’s rental car was cancelled by the inept hire company and for some reason our relationship with him seemed to cool quickly after. We barely spoke to him despite staying in the same room, and though we made half-plans to spend Christmas together it would be the last time we saw him. For our own part, we spent the few days there doing underwater laps in the swimming pool, fumbling our way through a succession of free salsa lessons, booking tickets to Cuba, and talking all night with a bottle of tequila between us and our legs dangling in the water.

Merida was very pleasant, but it wasn’t Mexico, not the way we knew it, and we were conscious of the fact that we were entering our last week in the country. So we boarded a small bus to Cuzama, past dozens of tiny villages, every fourth or fifth house made from thatch, and then jumped into some odd front-loading tuk-tuks that felt like being pushed around in a shopping trolley with a two-stroke engine. Along the way we could see an tiny, overgrown rail track following the road, broken in many places and sometimes barely visible. This, it turned out, was not for any sort of train but for a peculiar horse-and-cart that runs on rails. The ride along the tracks was rough and jittery and tooth-shattering – we watched an older white guy tumble right out of his carriage as it rocketed around a corner – and the horses didn’t look terribly well treated. Then again, neither did the drivers: a motley assortment of facial scars, beer guts and prison tattoos.

But the destination was breathtaking. Three sinkholes, deep under the ground – one required a descent of about 30m straight down a small hole via a rickety wooden ladder – each of a more incredibly electric blue than the last, clean and cool in the warm air of the surrounding cave. We jumped from the wooden platforms above each one, played and swum, dove from caves, tried without success to find the bottom, our eyes full with the colour and the wonder. One sinkhole had a magnificent tree root dropping twenty-odd metres from the cave roof which dangled, tantalizingly, four feet from the water, at which we jumped and grasped with arms outstretched, none of us able to take hold of it. Adam grabbed it, once, and sent out his other arm to climb it, but it slipped from his grasp, like Mexico was slipping from ours, and he fell, as we were falling, backwards into the endless unknowable blue.

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Music credits this week go to the wonderful “Cuando nadie pone un disco” by Odio Paris, Antonna’s “Tu hueles major”, and Papa Topo’s pogo-ish, more-than-slightly-addictive “Oso Panda”.

HUNGOVER AND: irritated, I sat with the others waiting endlessly for a bus that apparently had no intention of coming. It was a hot day in a dusty little shithole junction town with tuk-tuks screaming past, aggravating my headache and my sullen whining.

We were back in Oaxaca.

But Mexico, as always, puts a smile on every dial, turns each frown upside down. By the end of the day we would be clinking beer bottles on the rooftop of a village shop, looking out over a verdant green valley being swallowed up by low clouds spilling softly down the hills. We would walk back through the mist to our log cabin, gather wood from the stacks outside, build ourselves a fire. We would then have our fire-building skills totally rubbished by a laughing, moustachioed Mexican, and would start again from scratch. And we would fall asleep to the warm crackle of the fire beside us, tired and happy.

We were in the Pueblos Mancomunados, a ring of ten Zapotec villages running a co-operative in the mountains of Oaxaca. For three magical days we had the soft crunch of pine needles underfoot as we wandered from village to village over mountains that rose to 10,000ft. In a fairly misguided decision, we hired mountain bikes for the steepest downhill section, and spent the next several hours riding the brakes and stacking it every couple of metres, falling heavily into the wet leaves and dirt on either side. By the end of that particular adventure, poor Danielle’s legs looked like a massacre, all blood and bruises and grease and gore. We recovered with a couple of afternoon beers, sitting in the gutter outside the general store (they needed the empty bottles). It helped our mood but not our pain. Walking after that point was a little rough – especially as the track began a thigh-burning, lung-pumping, bowel-trembling ascent – and we were incredibly grateful to be picked up by a passing pickup truck for the final climb, running to it screaming like children chasing an icecream truck.

By the time we got back to Oaxaca town, Adam, who had struggled under the weight of a bad cold during the walk, fell into a heavy sickness that had him only semi-conscious while we searched for a bed to roll him into. He settled into a hotel to recover while the girls and I headed out for the traditional Oaxacan experience – stealing free samples of hot chocolate from the dozens of chocolaterias lining Calle 20 de Noviembre and throwing back shots of burning mezcal at the terrific bars along Porfirio Diaz. By the time Adam was up and going again we were so full of chocolate and alcohol that we decided to head straight down to Zipolite.

Zipolite was a little more busy than during my last visit, several weeks ago, but it would take a lot of prodding with sharp sticks for that town to ever be anything more than slightly above comatose. We found ourselves at a hostel (this is the standard mode of movement in Zipolite: one never ‘goes’ anywhere; one only ‘finds oneself’ there) run by an older American named Daniel, who spent our entire stay handing out joints like candy and trying, with that certain funny-harmless-old-guy charm, to hit on the girls. The former forgave the latter. For hours, wide-eyed and double-glazed, we would lie in the perfect oceans, wander up and down the sands, watch sunset from a slowly swinging hammock.

The Oaxacan coast is magical. Out on a boat one day we were surrounded by sea turtles, their extended heads slowly bobbing past along the water, and a pod of dolphins, performing elaborate tricks to impress us. Great churning ovals formed in the ocean as the fish began feeding frenzies; one small dinghy we passed had pulled in a sailfish that must have been close to two metres long. Later, from our hammocks, the guys would spot five humpbacks swimming by on the horizon (while I, with my disgustingly weak eyes, would be left to call out “Oh yeah… I think I see them…” while staring intently at what was later revealed to be a series of rocks).

We continued in this vein as we headed back across to Puerto Escondido, back to the Buena Onda Hostel, over which I have been so gushing in the past. There we met our mate Liam, walking purposefully and shirtlessly along the soft sand in the incredible heat with his heavy pack all the way from town, several kilometres away, still smiling under his cover of dreads and sunglasses. Liam had come through to visit in the midst of a grand tour that would take in New York, Mexico City, Panama City, Buenos Aires, and Santiago before eventually depositing him on Ireland’s icy shores to live with the love of his life, Marie.

For the week that we had him, Liam was excellent company, constantly ready with a burst of energy or a ridiculous pun at exactly the right moment. His puns, which I hadn’t really noticed until Adam pointed them out to me, were becoming a thing of legend. For instance, here is an original, handmade joke from the man himself, printed here completely in breach of copyright:

LIAM’S JOKE

There is a party going on for all the eggs and sperm. All the sperm are in their best suits and the eggs are wearing beautiful dresses and are all made up. Everyone’s having a great time, but over in the corner are an egg and a sperm just going totally over the top, making out with each other in front of everyone. It’s fairly disgusting. Eventually one of the sperm nudges them and says:
“Hey guys, get a womb!”

The week floated by in a blur of sunny days, swimming, ice creams, card games, Erin’s amazing guacamole (made fresh daily) and quickly-drained bottles of tequila. Along the way we met Johnno, an Australian who spoke in great unending waves at rapid-fire pace – almost inevitably about himself, but with such innocence and good humour that it was difficult to fault him. And Albert, the shabby, unkempt Brit, getting by on an overdose of charm and bad manners, calling out to girls at the bar “Ladies, can I have your mothers’ number? I want to call and ask her why she thought it was okay to raise you as such skanks” – the next day appearing on his balcony in a towel, baring his arse to us as we sat in the cafe opposite trying to finish our breakfast burritos in the blazing hot sun.

The only marker for each day was the ritual of coming out onto the sand to watch the sun touch the water with a silent sizzle; the only change from day to day was that the surf got more and more violent as the week wore on. Fortunately, it got to the point that we couldn’t swim anymore, because if it hadn’t I’m not sure we would have found a reason to leave. As it was, after seven days we piled back into a bus for Mazunte, a little beach right next to Zipolite.

Liam accidentally left his phone on the bus, provoking a brief car-chase in our cab which ended as soon as we saw the endless speedbumps piled up before us. I could seriously take a bat to the head of whoever introduced speedbumps to Latin America. Everywhere we’ve been, the locals have adopted them with gusto, and in Oaxaca state it seems as if there’s one every ten metres across the entire road network. It’s painful enough in a bus but unbearable in a cab, which never have sufficient clearance to get over them and have to perform elaborate, swerving choreography to avoid ripping their guts out on the ribbed concrete.

It was Liam’s last night and we spent it bodysurfing the shallow waves back into shore and playing Twister on the beach. Next morning we piled him into a cab and waved him off for the long journey back to Mexico City. We collected our things, ran into Johnno and his Dutch/Filipino mate Jarred, and all piled together onto an overnight bus bound for San Cristobal de las Casas, in Chiapas.

As with most overnight buses, it was a test of endurance, amplified by the fact that when we finally arrived, it was at 5:30 in the morning in one of the coldest towns we’d yet traveled through and I had somehow lost one of my shoes. This required me to go most of the day barefoot until I could buy some cheap replacements.

San Cristobal is a stunning highland town that has been beautifully preserved. The streets hum with life and the burble of conversation. We set up at a hostel with a rooftop bar at which we spent a long night drinking by the fire with a couple of Spanish girls and a Czech architecture student, Pavel. It seemed like a great hostel, until we returned to our room to find that there was no water – no shower, no toilet, no sink.

“I’m sorry,” said the clearly embarassed owner, “The town has no water. There are shortages across the state. Maybe tomorrow.”

This was a wake-up call to the problems of overpopulation in Mexico – in Australia, despite chronic drought and water shortage, I’ve never known of a town or city ever having to go without entirely. We decided to soldier on, getting drunk at the local wine bar, dancing arm-in-arm in the streets like idiots, chowing down on Johnno’s delicious 3-rule spaghetti bolognese (the three rules being: “I don’t like to be alone in the kitchen while I’m cooking. I don’t do the dishes. And when I call out that dinner’s ready, you sit the fuck down!”). But by the second morning, the bathroom was an ecological disaster zone, the toilet level getting dangerously close to making contact with some sensitive bits and pieces. We needed to get out. With Pavel in tow, we smuggled ourselves across the road to another hostel, which promised us that they could provide flushing toilets around the clock.

The cold was sending us nuts. We met up with an American girl, Kelly, and after a few shots of tequila built a fire in the back room of the hostel – with no wood available, we secretly raided the book exchange for its rattiest and least sellable merchandise and flung it into the fire. This was not a good move. In the harsh sober light of morning, under a heavy cloud of guilt, we jumped a bus down the mountains to Sumidero Canyon.

Dumped on the side of the highway, we wandered down to the canyon, found ourselves a boat, and shot out into the river. Above the roar of the boat, the walls to either side began to climb; buzzards congregated on the narrow shoreline under the cliffs. We passed a large crocodile, then another – and then a beach teeming with them, crawling over the top of each other, one hissing at the boat with his great yellow tongue exposed, another sliding silently into the water next to us. Everybody discreetly shuffled a little closer to the centre of the boat.

The walls continued to climb, and we rode on in shadow. Eventually they towered nearly a kilometre above us. We stopped under a moss covered waterfall; the effect of the water spluttering down on us from such a height was magical.

Down this end, though, the water became clogged with refuse from a nearby town; the boat had to chug its way through little garbage islands, pausing several times to remove bits of crap from the motor. We started spotting medical apparatus, sporting equipment; all of it supported and surrounded by a mass of unidentifiable bits of plastic, held together by scum and stench. In a well-regulated national park, it was a bit disheartening, and sitting on the highway afterwards, hailing every van and pickup that passed by, it was that image that stuck with us most.

Back in San Cristobal, we hooked up with Pavel again and hired some motorbikes to hit the villages encircling the town. Back on a scooter again, for the first time in far too long: the breeze in our hair, speed in our veins, the bursting fear of all those Guatemalan semi-trailers flopping about like a dying fish at the bottom of our guts. Out to small towns of shabby markets in the square, where hawkers followed us like a mob of admirers. Out to the gravel roads of empty farmland where children stood to applaud us as we rode past. Out to villages, quiet and deserted, where small groups of women selling fabrics not only tried to stop us on the road with outstretched hands but then sprinted after us, us riding frantically away and they picking up speed, like a group of brain-hungry zombies or the goddamn Terminator. In the shadows of mountains, on roads with potholes big enough to swallow a small car, on bikes powerful enough to reach 25km/hr on the uphills – it was brilliant to be back riding again, away from buses and tickets and timetables and delays, as our time in Mexico begins, finally, to wind down to its end, this beautiful country, these wonderful people, the breeze in our hair, just flying.

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Back into the thick of the Mexican scene this week music-wise, with Jazzin in the Replay by Club Comfort, El Mundo No Es Real by Hypnomango, Calabazos y Princesas by She’s a Tease, and Collateral Soundtrack’s Me Enamoro Cuando…

After you’ve checked out our video, why not head over to the Lifestyle Podnetwork for some more podcast action?

Ok, I’m jumping the gun a bit with my backlog of posts I should be getting on top of, but here is an update that I really wanted to get up.

A few days ago we got back from a brilliant 3 days up in the Cuchumatan mountains around Nebaj in the province of Quiché, Guatemala.

Danielle & I headed of with our guide Asinto from Guias Ixil in Nebaj and spent 3 days hiking 40km up, down & around exploring the small Ixil Mayan communities whilst trying to get our heads around Asinto’s explanations in Spanish about the brutal Guatemalan civil war that he fought in.

The folks up in these parts, especially the women and children, came across as quite reserved/apprehensive at first. We couldn’t work out why, especially after having found that most people in Guatemala are quite open and up for a chat. Later we heard that there had been a few incidents of foreigners “adopting” children (basically stealing them) which ended up with some unfortunate tourists being murdered after picking up one family’s little kid whilst walking through one of the communities.

Also, I’d say that the civil war has left a lot of the indigenous people up here quite suspicious of strangers.

Most people are subsistence farmers as far as I could tell and fortunately for us we didn’t come across anyone who tried to sell us anything! There are chickens, roosters, turkeys, dogs, cats, pigs and all the baby versions of these running around the place.

The women by far have the most interesting garb – purple, green and yellow pom-pommed hair braids, huipiles (blouses/dresses) and rebozos (shawls).

Most of the dads & sons seem to leave in the morning for work in town, or farm, or head out into the forest to log trees and collect wood.

The first day was some of the best hiking because we ended up walking from a hot sunny day up in to a thick fog on top of a mountain. It was beautiful.

The second night we stayed with a family and ended up putting on a bit of show to about 20 kids who had gathered around staring at Danielle and I through the kitchen door.
What to do? I showed them how to make fart sounds with their arm pits, and we exchanged different whistling techniques and sound fx. It was one of the best cultural exchanges I have had!

There seems to be a rather massive evangelical church presence up here too.
Both nights we tried to buy a beer or 2 and ended up having to go to the edge of each community to find the one family who sold alcohol. It was a little weird, but a lot of fun to be one of the outcasts drinking in the little watering hole.
With so many people living in cramped wooden houses with dirt floors I couldn’t see how it was ok for there to be so many reasonably sized churches built out of concrete/cinder blocks that had hard floors and electricity (to power the “jam session” that was blasted over the PA across the whole town & valley).
I have no idea what the medical facilities are like up there but we saw/met a lot of people with bad coughs and kids that didn’t look too healthy (one family had 3 kids who were all covered in what looked like hives, red eyes and sniffling noses). I felt really sorry for these little guys (especially when one of them nearly poked his eye out whilst trying to climb a tree).
It just seemed that the little money that is up there is kind of going into the wrong places (but i ain’t judgin’!).

Our time up in the mountains was fantastic and I’d really suggest to anyone who is going near Nebaj to take a few days and go explore!

The Photos

The Route

View Larger Map

GPS track file (GPX)
http://adamteale.com/gps/Hike_CuchumataneMountains.gpx

THE TEAM’S: all here, finally thrown together in the fiery bubbling cauldron of Mexico City. Planet Kapow is ready to properly begin, and Mexico’s laying out a welcome mat of fun times and dancing skeletons.

2010 marked one hundred years since Zapata, Villa, Carranza and Obregon fought the Mexican Revolution, an eleven-year period of passion and conflict – which managed to send the country into almost eighty years of “one-party democracy”, followed immediately by the presidency being handed over to a Coca-Cola executive. But that result, and the fact that the revolution was bereft of any coherent ideas, and the fact that all four heroes of the revolution were assassinated by their own side, and the fact that Villa was a thug and Obregon and Carranza were petty dictators and only Zapata was worth a good goddamn – these things don’t matter: the revolution is a revered piece of Mexican legend. Mexico City celebrated the centenary by hosting ten days of utterly mindmelting light-and-sound shows in the main zocalo, bringing tens of thousands of people shoulder-to-shoulder to watch psychedelic bubbles, crumbling buildings and dancing skeletons, and basically have their skulls crushed under an extreme level of awesome. As the ash from thousands of fireworks fell gently into our hair and onto our shoulders and the mammoth crowd shouted “Viva Mexico!” as one, you could forgive a little mythmaking.

And now with the girls here, everything is shiny and new again, and DF explodes with fresh vigour. The sections of the city that had been lifeless on our last visit now suddenly throbbed with energy; even Teotihuacan’s pyramids seemed more awe-inspiring than the first time round. We headed out to Xochimilco – a place Adam had been keen to visit since we first arrived in the city – where pre-Hispanic canals criss-cross the landscape and boats are the only form of transport. This is the Mexico City that Cortes found and conquered, and though the boat ride started off a little rough (the canal was little more than a sewer, and we started counting the bloated rat corpses that bobbed slowly past), we soon emerged onto the central canal, where a dozen fiestas were going on simultaneously in raucous barges floating by to the sound of a hundred competing mariachi musicians. Vendors selling corn glided past on little canoes, drunken teenagers shouted and giggled from their end-of-school party boat, and everything great about Mexico seemed to come together there on that peaceful river, pulling level with us briefly and then flying past, the great floating opera of love and music and passion and laughter and food and dance that is Mexico.

It was a great first week, getting drunk on hostel rooftops, spending a day wandering Chapultepec Park and its magnificent free zoo, watching the frankly incredible pre-Hispanic voladores ritual of four men throwing themselves from a fifty-metre tall structure to which they were bound only by a rope tied to one foot, and draining gigantic polystyrene cups of watery beer at the lucha libre wrestling (the echoing smash of flesh on steel and costumed midgets being tossed from the ring enough to soothe Adam into sleep, twice).

But by that stage we were all exhausted and feeling the need to hit the road. Our first stop was the silver city of Taxco, where we walked up and down the ridiculously steep streets to the incessant buzz of VW Beetles screaming past the beautiful whitewashed walls of the town and enjoyed yet more drunken nights on rooftops. Taxco is an absolute treasure of a town that doesn’t get nearly the exposure it deserves; it really feels like a little world unto itself, pitched high up at a silly angle against a mountainside with myriad cobblestone lanes branching off in all directions.

Nearby are the caves of Cacahuamilpa, a jaw-dropping set of caverns ploughing several kilometres into the mountain. Burdened with a Spanish-speaking tour guide who truly loved two things: the sound of his own voice and the fact that he controlled the lights in the cave, we would race into the darkness at each opportunity and stand there, tapping our feet impatiently until he and the twenty-odd Mexicans trotting along behind him would catch up and switch on the lights, then race through to the next patch of darkness. Not the best way to see them, certainly, but still: I don’t think I’ve seen many things that magnificent – 82 metres high, one of those caverns, which means in low light that you can look up and not be able to see the roof (or at least I, with my night blindness, couldn’t see it).

Truly amazing, but there’s heaps more lying on the road south, and now we’re all here, we’re all together, after twelve months of talking and working and saving and dreaming we’re here, we’re here, it’s Mexico and it’s everywhere and the road is long but we’re on it and here we go.

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In the song stakes this week we open with Quid Combo’s “Quien Jugar”, then segue into Neon Walrus’ “Mil Memorias”, and finish on Disco Ruido’s excellent “Mrs Love”. All three can be found on Fonogramaticos Vol 3, which is put out for free download by our friends over at Club Fonograma, easily the best source of great Latin American music on the interwebs.

Planet Kapow is also excited to announce that we are now part of the Lifestyle PodNetwork, which provides a variety of great podcasts. You can check them out here.

ADAM’S GONE. Up through Guadalajara, shooting back to Mexico City, rounding Los Angeles, across the Pacific to Hong Kong for two weeks while his father gets married and he meanwhile tries desperately to overcome jetlag in time to celebrate and then fly back to Mexico. Daniel and I, the only ones left, the lone survivors, continue our trip along the coast.

Immediately on leaving Cuyutlan, Mexico raises another curtain and becomes a totally different country, straight out of a Corona ad, all swaying palms and thatched bungalows and tropical heat and schoolkids piled into the backs of pickup trucks, hooning around the sharp clifftop turns of a road that clings ferociously to the gorgeous coastline as we pass out of Colima state, roll slowly through Michoacan, and pass eventually into Guerrero.

In Guerrero we spend a couple of days in Zihuatanejo, the fabled paradise for Tim Robbins in Shawshank Redemption, passing away a couple of balmy nights with margaritas and fish tacos in open-air bars with gravel underfoot. Close to paradise, but the overabundance of wrinkly American retirees lazily throwing sticks for their overweight dogs sends us off again on an overnight bus to Oaxaca state.

At eleven o’clock, under cover of darkness, the bus pulls into Acapulco, Mexico’s ultra-famous resort town of the ’50′s. With a couple of hours to kill we jump out, wandering barefoot through drifts of rotting garbage spread evenly across the roads like snow, passing cars throwing up greenish-brownish-spewish water onto our clothes as we seek shelter on the stripclub-crammed roads. As close to a modern ruin as you’re likely to find in the world.

And then off again, into Oaxaca state, down to Puerto Escondido, finding our way to the Buena Onda Hostel.

There’ll be more to say about Puerto Escondido later. For now, let it suffice that the Buena Onda is probably one of the greatest hostels in the world, a tiny, ultra-relaxed society of surfers and drifters and Brazilian models, set on one of the most beautiful beaches in the world, with a soft breeze coming in off the ocean and the palm fronds waving and the plethora of hammocks making slow synchronized arcs. Everyone rushes out onto the beach as the sun sinks into the ocean with a soft sizzle and then retreats back to the outdoor tables, gathering around a bottle of tequila and a guitar and Dan’s harmonica and swapping stories while others bring out pots of achingly juicy prawns and soft tortillas. I could (and later would) spend a lot more time there, but even the couple of days Daniel and I were there merged together into one blissful instant, punctuated only by the brief hour when some over-excited local set off some fireworks too close to his house, set his thatched roof on fire and started and inferno that engulfed fourteen houses and had some of the more panicky hostel residents packing their bags and rushing out onto the beach for safety.

But of course, all things must pass, and before we knew it Dan and I were on our way to Zipolite, an hour or so east, another thick slice of paradise, this time with a steady population of hippies, nudists and drug dealers (the distinctions between the three often hazy, admittedly). But the ocean in Zipolite was baying for blood, pretty rough even at waist deep, and with time slipping away we boarded a minivan in sweaty Pochutla up the twisting, vaguely nauseating road through the mountains to Oaxaca City.

In Oaxaca we were led in tow by a maniacal, six-and-a-half-foot tall, cape wearing American woman who showed us some of the better nightlife in the city. Still a bit hazed out by the Escondido/Zipolite blissfest, we visited a traditional weaving village, the biggest tree in the world (“In width! In width! It is NOT the tallest tree in the word!” shrieked our guide, having obviously dealt with disappointed visitors in the past), a mezcal factory, and impressive Zapotec ruins at both Mitla and Monte Alban. Then up over a 3100m-high mountain and into a stunning valley where clear mineral springs bubble up and over the cliffs in cascading petrified waterfalls. After the rush of the previous few days we were able to stand there, dumbstruck, and think about where we were. And then our van driver told us it was time to go. And it was.

My brother’s time in the country was almost up. We boarded a bus to Mexico City, expecting to finally meet up with the girls and our mate Liam at the Salon Corona at 7:30. But our bus was delayed driving in circles around the megalopolis, and when we arrived at 8:30 there was nobody there. We dithered and dallied, trying to get in contact over the internet. Finally, at 10:30pm, it came to light that there was a second Salon Corona, no more than a block away. We ran up there, saw Liam out the front, hugged and greeted, and rushed through the glass doors to the flourescent-light-flooded interior, where cheap metal chairs were scratching the cheap lino floors.

And there they were.

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Two Spaniards bookend the music selections of this episode – chillwave leaders Delorean with their beautiful “Big Dipper” from 2009′s outrageously awesome Ayrton Senna EP, and El Guincho’s excellent “Bombay” from 2010′s Pop Negro. Wedged in between is Tlen Huicani with “El Cascabel”.

I love Mexico.

Upon arriving in Mexico some 4 months ago I really had no idea what we would be about to experience.
The only references I had were from movies like Desperado & Nacho Libre, and I think I had seen The Mexican.

The history? Ha, I had no idea. I remember learning something about a fair chunk of the USA once being owned by Mexico. And maybe Aztecs & Mayans had something to do with Mexico too.

The food? Ha, yep nachos, burritos and Corona beer.

The music? Ha, mariachi of course.

The geography? Ha, desert. But I at least knew it was the country south of the USA, somewhere. Cancun?

The people? Ha, dudes with big mustaches sporting sombreros sitting around playing guitar.

Mexico pretty much has it all.

When we crossed the border from San Ysidro into Tijuana I was slightly apprehensive after all the warning we’d had from people on the US side. Apparently we were going to either be killed or robbed by the narco folks within minutes. But after entering Mexico the only thing that looked like it was going to kill us was the heat. One day it reached 47C or so and you can see in the 3rd episode of Planet Kapow that we were wasted. We managed to spend a night camping under the stars with some friends we’d made in Ensenada, we swam at some beautiful beaches, and ate some tasty tasty food. Tacos pescados to be exact. Yummo!

There was a lot to see in Baja California but due to the heat it was just too damn hard to make the effort. I’ll come back to Baja one day, once I have learnt to surf, and will spend some months cruising the coastline in search of the perfect taco pescado, and of course the perfect wave.

A month or so in we attempted to reach a farm out in Yepachi, Chihuahua, to work on a farm for a few weeks. We were going to learn about Organic farming and hopefully pickup some Spanish. Instead we spent 24 hours or so lost out in the Chihuahuan’ wilderness getting chased by bulls, drinking water off the sides of mountains, and spooning during the cold night. We ended up walking 40km or so eventually deciding that we would postpone the farming idea until sometime later.

But it all worked out beautifully.

After the farm fail we got on the first bus we could to the city of Chihuahua where our love affair with Mexico started to fire. We befriended some students who took us out for drinks and tried to teach us how to dance in their kitchen until 4am.

And Mexico only got better.

We found ourselves in beautiful Unesco heritage listed cities in the order of Durango-Zacatecas-Guanajuato, each one somehow out-awesomeing the last one, had coffees and beers around many beautiful city plazas, tried to learn spanish at a Spanish language school, found even more ways to eat cheese and tortillas (my favourite ended up being the quesadillas we had at a street eat in Puerto Vallarta), we road horses up the mountains around Real de Catorce, we climbed volcanoes that had grown out of some poor man’s farm around 50 years ago, we stood awe struck taking in the vastness of one of the biggest canyons in the world Barrancas del Cobre (Copper Canyon), we experienced the spectacle & might that is Luche Libre wrestling in Mexico City, we walked with The Dead during the dia del muerte festival (Day of the Dead), we scaled ancient pyramids and tried to fathom the design & engineering of ancient ruined cities, we froze our asses off and drank delicious hot chocolate up in the mountains of Oaxaca, we got dumped by the heavy world renowned surf of Puerto Escondido and hungout at beautiful seaside villages like Zipolite & Mazunte, and we continued to dig deeper into the history of country with more revolutions than a rotary engine.

And after the whole 4 months or so we never saw one burrito or plate of nachos, and never had any direct run-ins with any of the narcos.

But probably the thing I have enjoyed the most about Mexico has been the hospitality and overall kindness of the people.
No matter where in Mexico we were people would be patient enough to decipher our slowly progressing attempts at the Spanish language, and with a sense of humour, would help us out.

Mexico is beautiful.

WE HAD: been hyping Guadalajara between ourselves for quite a while. I don’t know how it started, because I don’t remember having a conversation with anyone who raved about it, though a lot of people seemed to be heading there. But we had definitely built up some expectations somewhere along the way. When we’d been stumbling around a dead, lifeless Morelia in the days following Dia de Muertos, and when we’d been lying in a horrible bed of sunburn-related pain in Uruapan after climbing Paricutin, we’d consoled ourselves with the thought of the party to come. Guadalajara, the second city, four million people in the mountains, would not let us down.

At some point over the following four days, during which the most memorable night we’d had had ended with us buying extortionate drinks at a bar filled with morbidly obese and / or pregnant prostitutes before retreating back to the calming groans of the 24-hr porn channel in our hotel, we decided that we’d misled ourselves somewhat. We caught the next bus for Tequila.

In Tequila, where the namesake drink was invented in the 16th century, we toured the Jose Cuervo factory and trashed ourselves on cheap margaritas and Cuban cigars. It was as poor a gringo performance as anything you’re likely to see but it helped blow off a little steam after Guadalajara. We returned to the big city drunk, happy and slightly abusive, though it failed to improve Guadalajara at all. We slept it off and headed for the beach.

Down to Cuyutlan, through valleys stuffed tight with fir, the weather getting warmer, nostrils slowly unblocking and eyes glazing over. We tossed our things into our hotel, pitched neatly around a pool from which a mosaic of a topless mermaid grinned happily at us, and strode a couple of metres to the gleaming black sand that stretched endlessly in both directions. With salt haze obscuring the horizon, we threw ourselves at the pounding surf, we lay on deckchairs sipping micheladas, we ate cheap food at empty restaurants while mosquitoes went to town on our increasingly disfigured legs. Then, inevitably, Daniel – who had, at some point during the Cuervo tour, decided that tequila was “like water” for him – would convince us to buy a large bottle of said beverage and polish it off during the night. Generally, this would be followed by long periods in the bathroom for Adam and I, whilst Daniel laughed and called us pussies from his rocking chair on the patio, then by a sleep, then by waking with our skulls disintegrating and going out to start the whole process again.

The only attempt to break this cycle came with our attempt to walk six kilometres up the sand to the neighbouring beach of El Paraiso. The day was windy and hot, and within a few minutes we all had our t-shirts wrapped tightly around our heads, blowing against our faces, looking like something straight out of Lawrence of Arabia, our skin rapidly burning (again) as it slowly dawned on us that six kilometres of sand does not make for the most interesting hike. But we strode on, coming eventually to a deserted expanse of land where the corpses of no fewer than fourteen sea turtles, each a metre long, lay scattered across the sand in various stages of decomposition, some little more than skeletons, others looking like they’d just washed up, all being picked over by large flocks of buzzards. No more than one hundred metres away lay the turtle sanctuary, famous throughout the region. It was mystifying.

But then that was that. Adam left the next day, off to Hong Kong to attend his father’s wedding, to return in two weeks. And Daniel and I boarded a bus bound for Zihuatanejo, and steeled ourselves for a few days of very long distances.

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Two songs this episode – the ridiculous “El Mariachi Loco” by Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlan, and the absolutely beautiful “Antillas” by El Guincho, from his guaranteed 2008 partystarter, Alegranza!.

AND OUT: of the asphyxiating behemoth of Mexico City, through the murky endless ocean of white houses, out, out, until we hit the long green fields and lakes of Michoacan state, heading into Morelia, readying ourselves for Dia de Muertos.

The Day of the Dead is one of the most famous Mexican traditions, but it’s hard to pinpoint what it’s actually about. Traditionally, in pre-Hispanic times most peoples had some time of year when they believed communion with the dead was possible – for the Aztecs, it was usually an entire month following the summer solstice; for the peoples of Michoacan, only one day – during which people would ensure that their loved ones were cared for in the next life with offerings of food and flowers. With the arrival of the Spanish a big dollop of Catholicism got stirred into the mixture and later, Jose Guadalupe Posada’s calavera engravings – meant to satirize the upper classes – would come to be the dominant image of the event. Now, the day seems to be mainly about teenagers getting drunk and eating candy, and little kids dressing up as zombies. Still, in Morelia they threw one hell of a party, and it was a nice place to be out on the streets soaking up the vibe.

But apparently more traditional celebrations for Dia de Muertos do still remain, and so we headed out to nearby Patzcuaro – where we found more candy – and to Isla Janitzio – where we found more drunken teenagers. But whatever; the island was appealingly misty and mysterious, with terrific views back to the mainland from the ridiculous 40m-high statue of Jose Maria Morelos y Pavon that looms over the island like a blocky concrete King Kong. And Patzcuaro’s countryside was refreshingly airy after the monoxide onslaught of Mexico City.

With only a few more days before Adam was due to leave Mexico for his dad’s wedding, we headed onwards, to the town of Uruapan, from where we planned to hike out to Volcan Paricutin. Paricutin rose without any warning whatsoever from a farmer’s field in 1943, in the process burying two nearby villages and instantly creating an industry of men on horses who assault you at the bus stop offering to guide you to the top. The volcano’s initial eruption lasted nine years and left it standing at 410m, since which time it has remained dormant. We set out early with bags full of cookies and water – but no sunscreen (because we’re idiots).

We had with us an eleven-year old on horseback named Jesus about whom we learned the following: he did not have a girlfriend, he liked going to school, he knew how to say “Hello”, “Thankyou” and “Tip?” in English, and he liked basketball and quesadillas. Jesus was our way, our light and our guide. He also kept all our water strapped to his horse and had the bad habit of riding a hundred metres in front of us where we couldn’t get to it.

To begin with the trek was glorious, through long avocado fields looking out onto vistas of cuneiform crusty black lava from which the bell tower of a drowned church was visible. After an hour or two we hit the black volcanic sand, and it began to be a bit of a slog. But we looked about ourselves still with wonder, passing tiny Purepecha villages and women making blue corn quesadillas on black hotplates. Then the trees fell away and the track started to rise, and the sand became unbearable, filling our shoes and taking us back a half-step for every step we took. The sun beat down upon us mercilessly and Jesus ran away with our water, further up the track. Adam, as ever, strode on. Dan and I started to struggle.

By the time we hit the base of the volcano we’d already done fourteen kilometres, which is what we’d thought the entire hike would be. Dan and I were already finished, but before us stood a perfect cone of black sand, incredibly steep, stretching a few hundred metres into the sky. Jesus dismounted and started scampering up the volcano; he and Adam would reach the top within half an hour. But for Daniel and I the afternoon stretched on – in this unbearably soft, steep sand each step actually took us further backwards than it did forwards. We fell to our knees, we crawled on our hands, we tried to brave the rocks instead of the sand and slipped and skidded constantly. And we burned – oh how we burned. It was one of the hardest walks I’ve ever had to do – not even Jesus could save us. But we found ourselves, somehow, at some point, at the summit, staring into a deep, steaming crater. The rim was perfect; we walked around it, running into a couple of other hikers who had come straight across the lava fields. And to get down there was only one option – a long straight path going directly to the ground, made up of nothing but soft black sand. So we ran, catapulting ourselves down at incredible speed, each step covering one and a half, two metres, flying, vaulting, and such an incredible feeling I’ve rarely felt.

But after we’d emptied our shoes of the three litres of sand we were each carrying, we still had fourteen kilometres laying before us, most of it still in the hard sun in soft sand. By the end of the day Dan, glowing a furious red, would be trying desperately to cover his badly burnt neck with his shirt, holding one of his arms within his singlet and the other one dangling free, looking like nothing so much as a radioactive one-armed sheik. We would all be utterly burnt and in immense pain by the time we pulled back into Uruapan. We would sleep, and we would wake, and we would know. It was time for tequila.

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Music on this episode is made up of the raging “Calamares Gigantes en Luarca” by  Montanas, from Fonogramatico Vol 4.; “El Zapaeado” by Tlen Huicani, from World Network’s Traditional Songs of Mexico compilation, and the solid guitar sheen of Triangulo de Amor Bizarro’s “De la Monarquia a la Criptocracia” from Fonogramatico Vol 8. As always, all of the Fonogramaticos compilations – which are universally superb – can be downloaded for free from Club Fonograma.

AND HERE: we are.

Hillsides covered in boxes, boxes on top of boxes, these little white boxes, hills beyond hills covered in boxes, how many lives inside each one? – an army, a multitude, a swarm, an omen, a mass, a teeming ant nest, a sadness, a pity. Twenty-five million people choking to death as one.

Mexico fucking City.

We arrived at the northern terminal in darkness, and it would only be in later days that we’d see this endless expanse of little white box houses, draped in a thick icing of carbon monoxide – from the castle in Chapultepec Park; from the buses as we headed out and back throughout the week. The Aztecs considered Mexico City the centre of the universe, and centuries later their observation remains tragically true – the place is a black hole, a cosmic cesspool of people and concrete and cars and smog and shit, swirling constantly and drawing more in toward it. Built on a swamp, the place actually visibly sags – the roofs of the buildings in the centre undulating like a serpent. The city has a population higher than all of Australia, piled on top of each other, everyone breathing in each other’s fumes, everyone sharing in the utter ruin of the land under the weight of modern civilization.

And yet – impossibly, Mexico City remains a fairly pleasant place to be. The centre is positively overflowing with parks and plazas and museums and restaurants, and 80% of the time you can walk down the street without having to shuffle shoulder-to-shoulder with the faceless mass of humanity that resides here (though on the Metro that statistic drops to about 3% of the time). The main plaza, Plaza de la Constitucion, is breathtaking despite the roaring traffic; the main cathedral is wonderfully epic despite the roving crowds of vendors and beggars. And Chapultepec Park – less a park than a combined park/market/zoo/museum/entertainment complex – is a fantastic place to wander aimlessly while aggressive-looking squirrels glare at you from the tops of bins.

Just outside lies the ancient ruined city of Teotihuacan, with two of the largest pyramids in the world providing views over the smoky plains while touts with jaguar whistles startle large groups of Japanese tourists. The biggest city in the Americas at the time – supporting up to 250,000 people – the city collapsed mysteriously in the 8th century and was a site of pilgrimage for Aztec leaders right up to the Spanish invasion. It was the first pre-Hispanic site we’d visited on our trip through Mexico, and its majesty was simply awesome.

On our final day in the city my brother arrived, a day late after a cancelled flight, a layover in Dallas, and an international hijacking attempt brought on by Stilnox tablets. Together we headed out to the lucha libre – wrestling, Mexican style. Such a mix of the skilled and the inept I’ve never seen before or since, as extremely large men and women with a shameless fondness for spandex threw each other over ropes, dived out of the ring and into the first rows of the crowd, slapped each other on the chest, and generally pranced around ridiculously, while the raucous, heaving crowd went wild, screaming and clapping and spitting and throwing food. The stadium banned cameras and so our only footage is that stolen over an iPhone camera, so you’ll have to use your imagination – but trust me, it’s utterly glorious.

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The tunes on this episode are the stabbing rush of “Nada Puedo Hacer” by Los Romanticos de Zacatecas, the lovely “Valentina” by Carla Morrison, “Bestia (Julieta Vanegas Remix” by Hello Seahorse!, and the absolutely pounding “Nunca Nunca” by XYX.

AND NOW: our long and winding journey brings us to what quickly became our favourite Mexican city, Guanajuato, where the streets fluttered with coloured flags and music, where the buildings burst with colour and life, where everything great about Mexico came together in one neatly packaged town, nestled safely in a small valley.

We’d arrived quite by accident in the middle of the Cervantino, one of the biggest arts festivals in Latin America, and we found ourselves in a swirling cyclone of amazing music, art, and to Adam’s delight, the most incredibly good-looking population of people in the entire world. Trying to find a decent excuse to hang around, we enrolled in a Spanish school and were thrown quickly back into the workaday routine, waking at 8am and rolling painfully out of bed and down to the local market, where we purchased our 5-peso breakfast of delicious bread, average cheese and godawful ham, inevitably washed down by a shitty 10-peso Oxxo coffee. We’d then wander up the steep hill to school, trying (and generally failing) to get our heads together during the three hours of classes before rolling back down the hill for bagels and coffee at the cafe below our hostel. During the nights we’d wander back and forth between bars humming with great bands, talking and drinking and occasionally, regrettably, dancing as well. It was a truly terrible way to spend a week.

As the week wore on the party got fiercer and the nights more surreal; we watched from a pedestrian overpass as a massive squad of policeman swarmed on a small reggae party on a sidestreet, tackling people to the ground and throwing people in their squad cars. Later, drunken teenagers swarmed around us, chanting “Photo! Photo! Photo!” at Adam and cheering as he took a shot of them, before flying off as a great mob to the next poor sucker toting a camera; later still, the main street was all of a sudden cordoned off by a wall of policemen wielding batons and forcing everybody of the road. Adam and I were asked to pose in photos for people as if we were celebrities; an old couple, dancing in a terrible state of inebriation, fell onto our table and smashed my glass before stumbling into the band and trying to take the microphone from the singer. At 4am on the last night a police-car deliberately tried to run down one of the kids we were walking with, missing only by inches as his friend wrenched him out of the way.

The increasingly aggressive behaviour of the police over the week was mystifying, particularly in the context of an internationally famous festival. Apart from a couple of brief run-ins later in Mexico City, and seeing them calmly watch a couple of men beat the shit out of a guy in Zacatecas, it was one of the few times we’ve seen the Mexican police live down to their truly atrocious reputation.

From Guanajuato we headed to Queretaro, where we got drunk with Hector, the Mexican intellectual, and where we got drunk with Tim, the Australian intellectual, wandering through the incredibly rich city of beautiful plazas and the great strip of bars, and then climbing the Pena de Bernal, the third-largest rock in the entire world – but really it was all just a delay, a distraction, a roadblock before the Great Big Thing that lay before us and occupied our minds and our conversations day and night: Mexico City.

Mexico fucking City.

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Music on this episode includes “24 horas no son suficiente”, by Mexico’s wonderful Piyama Party, the very funky “Cumbia” by the Mexican Institute of Sound, and “La Tierra Sagrada” by Maria y Jose, as well as a great ska track recorded on the streets of Guanajuato.

AND SO: the southward journey continues, out of Zacatecas state and into tiny Aguascalientes. The city here was another of Mexico’s famed silver cities, along with Zacatecas, San Luis Potosi, Guanajuato, Queretaro and Taxco – all of which we would visit in due course. While it failed to live up to the stunning beauty of Zacatecas, it was nevertheless a disgustingly pleasant place to while away a couple of days – especially after we were seized upon by the staff of a bar near the cathedral, who for no particular reason decided to spend their Monday night showering us with free beer and tequila and trying to set us up with middle-aged factory workers from the outskirts of the city (these being, we supposed, the only women to have entered the establishment in quite some time). In a surreal ending, they rounded up some local lesbians who happened to be walking past (with shouts of “Hey, lesbians!”) to have their photos taken with us. Yes, the fun never stops here in Mexico…

From there to San Luis Potosi, full of beautiful colonial streets, where we stuffed our faces with the local delicacy – tortillas fried in hot chili oil and stuffed with meat. It seemed like everything was shaping up for an excellent stay – and then we ran into Omar, a friendly-seeming guy who invited us round for a couple of drinks. For a while everything went well – he was a filmmaker, showed us some of his films, told us about a few cool bars – but started becoming, in turns, uncomfortably aggressive and then creepily desperate for our company, all of which was soundtracked by his constant catchphrase, a growled “Stop fucking around!”. After a few hours we tried to make our goodbyes, but he insisted on walking us back to our hotel, where he proceeded to pound his fists on the front glass door for several minutes and then got into a near-punchup with the hotel manager. It ruined San Luis Potosi for us, but fortunately Omar was the exception that proves the rule – one of very very few unlikeable Mexicans we’ve come across. Still, it was enough to put us on a bus bound for Real de Catorce.

Real de Catorce was a thriving silver town of 40,000 during the 1800′s, but was almost entirely abandoned during the first few decades of the 20th century – nobody really knows why, though it was a bad time both for silver prices and for rural Mexico, which was going through the ten-year revolution. Now it’s a stark stone ruin draped across a valley – though quite a few people have moved back in and set up shop, trading on the ‘ghost town’ reputation. We went for a long meandering walk through the valley, past the abandoned mine, creepy in the twilight, but we knew there was only one way to do this properly: on horseback.

Clip-clopping along slowly, cautiously – horses being unfamiliar to both Adam and I, each of us filled with visions of the horse tripping and rolling on every descent. Out of the cobblestone streets of town, through great stands of cacti, past the stone ruins of an abandoned village. Finally across barren plains, empty and desolate, to a mountain atop which the indigenous Huichol people perform their sacred peyote ceremonies after their three-month march from Jalisco province.

Three thousand metres high, with sweeping views of the surrounding country, all gloriously free of the least trace of civilization – and who should we find there but an American IT guy from town, who had jogged all the way from his internet cafe “just to get the blood pumping” – “Normally I do two laps a day,” he sighed with a voice full of regret, “but my foot’s a bit sore, so I’m going to take it a little easy today”. He turned and jogged away, only getting about twenty metres down the road before I killed him with a large rock to the head and buried him in a shallow grave. Asshole.

But riding back into town, with mariachi music from some tinny speakers on someone’s roof booming across the valley, and children playing dancing games in the dirt, giggling and screaming, and the whole place just spread out before us against the valley wall, with the cathedral cresting it all – despite the pain of a crushed spine and mangled ballsack that was to follow, in that moment everything was glorious.

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Music on this episode includes the Julieta Venegas remix of Ceci Bastida’s “Como Soy” (from Fonogramaticos Volume 6), “Mexico Lindo y Querido” by Valente Pastor, Alberto Angel and Humbierto Craviato – another selection from the excellent mariachi compilation Viva Mexico y Sus Canciones – and another selection from the Shadows, “Guitar Tango”.

OH, ZACATECAS! Where it finally all came together, where Mexico finally showed us her true glorious self, where the good vibes that had been slowly swelling since Tepic at long last came crashing down on us in a great wave.

Finding ourselves in one of the nicest hostels in Mexico, perched above the magnificent basilica around which Zacatecas revolves, the streets alive with noise and parties, we met the biggest group of travelers we’d come across since entering Mexico. Once again, as in La Paz, these were members of the hardcore set – six of them were traveling from Alaska to Argentina by motorbike. One – a lieutenant of the Australian army, discharged after being severely wounded in Afghanistan – was on his way up from Argentina, having had an incredible journey that included traversing the hellish jungle no-man’s-land of the Darien Gap on foot over ten days and having to flee from a group of heavily-armed Colombian drug-runners. Against this backdrop our own journey seemed little more than going out to the local shops after dark, and we quickly hit the streets to avoid having to reveal how lame we were.

And what streets! Having never been to Europe, a city like Zacatecas was completely foreign to me, and I stumbled along the narrow cobblestone streets in a baffled daze, staring at the beautiful colonial buildings and plazas in silent awe. Around us religious processions walked past in a river of blue balloons, clowns were attacked by screaming children, street parties raged, people danced, people laughed, people looked at each other and smiled. We went nightclubbing in an abandoned mine. We strapped ourselves to a flimsy-looking wire and shot two-hundred metres across the valley. We watched a large german shepherd, strapped by its electric cattle prod-wielding owner to a cafe chair, get spooked and run down the street, smashing several cars with the wildly flailing chair. We saw Mexico, and we drank it down greedily.

And then we received word that a cowboy festival – a charreada – would be taking place just outside town, so we hopped a taxi our there, and were immediately drowned in old Mexico – mariachi bands playing atop the grandstand, elaborately dressed horseman performing equally elaborate lasso tricks, a crowd that hooted and hollered and tossed their sombreros and shoes into the ring every time three horses were brought down. The horse-tripping that went on at the charreada is the type of thing I would have found a little abhorrent a couple of years ago – the injuring of animals for sport seemed senseless to me. But being there – well, it’s different. The charros are men of skill, and if they rope a horse incorrectly (around one leg instead of two, for instance) the rope is immediately dropped and the horse released. But more importantly, the charros are preserving traditions that hearken back to a type of agriculture that was based around knowing your animals. To say that it went back to a time when people cared for their animals may be going too far down the “idealized rural past” pipeline, but they definitely knew their animals, and this afforded those animals a certain kind of dignity – the dignity to run and to have the chance of escape (no matter how small that chance may, in truth, have been). It certainly seems preferable to the sort of industrialized agriculture we partake in today, where we line up animals onto conveyor belts leading to a painless, meaningless death, divide them and distribute them in standardized plastic packaging and discard them from supermarket shelves when they reach their use-by date.

Support it or decry it, but we walked out of that charreada feeling like we’d seen something worth seeing, that we’d come away with another little piece of this country revealed, and that it was time to go jump on some horses of our own.

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Songs on this episode include the excellent “Guero Canelo” by Calexico, Pedro Fernandez’s “Caminos de Guanajuato”, Carla Morrison’s tearjerker “Estas Lagrimas” and Corazon Attack’s party-starter “Mi Motivo Particular”.

A STRANGE: fruity-spicy-soupy concoction that in no way resembles the Spanish soup of the same name (the Mexican version can be spelt with either a ‘z’ or an ‘s’), gaspacho is a specialty of the lovely city of Morelia, in Michoacan state.

The best summer meal of all time, in my opinion – eating one is like setting up a hammock in your mouth and letting your tongue lie back sipping margaritas while the sun sets behind your tonsils. It’s also the healthiest snack we’ve ever come across in Mexico by quite some distance, being the only one so far that’s neither deep fried nor stuffed with ham (there’s still some cheese thrown in for good measure: this is still Mexican food, after all).

Beware: the chili may be mild on top, but by the time it gets concentrated at the bottom it’s pretty fiery…

1. First off, you want your fruit – the classic combination is pineapple, mango and jicama, but watermelon and cucumber are also popular additions. Jicama is a root native to Mexico, but has become increasingly popular in Asia – Chinese, Thai and particularly Vietnamese grocers may be the best place to go looking. In any event, you want a roughly even quantity of each fruit, chopped very finely – depending on cup size you’ll want a total of around three cups of fruit per person.

2. Now, you’re going to need to grab a large, clear plastic cup or glass – pint-size or larger. Mix all the fruit together and spoon it into the cup until it is about a third of the way to the top. Now give it a sprinkle of crumbled white cheese – cojima cheese, from Michoacan state, is best, but Greek feta is a fine substitute. Add a pinch of mild Mexican chili powder on top, and perhaps the tiniest bit of cayenne pepper too, if you feel like a bit of a kick.

3. Fill the cup to two thirds full of the finely-cut fruit, and then repeat the process of adding cheese and chili. Now squeeze the juice of two oranges and two limes, and add this to the cup. The mixture should be nearing the brim by now.

4. Add a final layer of fruit – pile that sucker as high as possible! Then lay down another cheese/chili layer, sprinkle some coriander on top, and throw a good pinch of salt in as well (no point in making this thing too healthy). Grab a spoon, and you’re good to go.

A MISREAD: train timetable, a sudden inexplicable desire to get out of Posada Barrancas as quickly as possible, and without warning we found ourselves abruptly back in Chihuahua, far from the coast where the train was supposed to deposit us.

Back to the bar at the San Juan, meeting another bunch of local boys and girls who trawled us across the bars of the city, drunk in the back of their car, dropping us back in the morning to stumble back to our room and pass out.

The best fun when traveling, I’ve found, is always in these towns like Chihuahua – B-level towns, big enough to have a university and a couple of bars, maybe a couple of nice parks or a river, but nothing more. Nothing much to see or do, but enough to fill your day if you’re bored. Those towns have just enough attractions that the people who live there are proud to live there, and proud to show the town off to visitors, and not jaded from a constant influx of tourists. And Mexicans, on the whole, just seem a whole lot more connected with where they come from than a lot of places in the world, accepting of both the good and the bad, and almost universally proud of the whole. It’s a great atmosphere to travel in.

But our grand journey south needed to begin, so we headed off to Torreon in an attempt to get out to an abandoned mine nearby. Torreon was a bit of a surprise – a beautifully grand, absolutely decrepit hotel – utterly dilapidated, big holes in the roof – but nevertheless one of the best places we’ve stayed. And an aqueduct beneath the city, and a lovely plaza. But we’d come to see the abandoned mine and, finding the buses out there long since terminated, we abandoned Torreon instead, catching a bus through the painfully lonely, flat desert to Durango, far to the south, as the sun set over the distant horizon.

Durango shocked us. It was stunning. An incredible Plaza del Armas forming the centre of the city, captivating buildings and an unbelievably good-looking population who just stood and stared at us with those fiery Mexican eyes. And every day there was filled with light and colour and fun, but during the night we felt just a little out of step with everything, unable to find a good bar, failing to meet anyone, sidling up to the local hamburger stand with a guilty look in our eye and ordering one with the lot.

A situation not helped by our hotel, a cheap dive we dubbed ‘the Whistlefuck’ – filled from early morning by moustachioed workmen playing bad Mexican radio far too loud and whistling incessantly, and filled from early evening by young men bringing prostitutes into the hotel for sessions that pounded painfully through the paper-thin walls for anywhere between twenty seconds and several hours.

We got to know them. There was the Donkey Puncher, a young man who came in at the same time each afternoon with a different girl, earning his nickname through the extremely strange braying / snorting / hiccuping / strangled sound he made at the moment of climax – followed immediately thereafter by a babbled apology to the girl, who I guess would now have to find another way to fill out the remaining 58 minutes for which she’d been booked.

And who could forget the Emphysema Screamer, a working girl who sounded like she’d been around the block a few too many times, whose moans of almost-certainly-authentic pleasure were halted every so often to make way for a hacking smoker’s cough that always ended with something being spat somewhere. Enchanting.

Outside of Durango lay a few film sets that had been built specifically to take advantage of Durango’s empty desert landscapes (and cheap Mexican labour) to shoot Westerns from the 50′s through to the 70′s. The Magnificent Seven was shot out there; so was The Wild Bunch. Films kept being shot there sporadically right up until a couple of years ago but the Western died a slow death a while back and Hollywood had found cheaper places to shoot films, so now they lie abandoned. We headed out there to live out our Clint Eastwood fantasies – Adam performing probably the best shot-in-the-chest fake death I’ve ever seen, period.

It was fun. What’s more, after a month of trying to get on a roll here in Mexico, it finally felt like the pieces were falling into place. And it was only going to get better.

-

The music in this clip comes courtesy of three artists: myself, with my (frankly) quite amazing piece “G Chord Strummed Continuously For Several Minutes”, our old faves Jovenes y Sexys with their utterly gorgeous “Como Siempre Soñe”, and the absolute legend of Western film scores, Ennio Morricone, with “Theme from For a Few Dollars More”.

AND THEN: a sleep like death, a sleep of nothing but sweet engulfing darkness.

We awoke to find ourselves in the city of Chihuahua, a few hours northwest, sore to the bone and hungry as we’d never been hungry before. Chihuahua was a big shaggy dog of a city, impossible to dislike despite the constant sounds of fucking wafting into our cheap hotel room from the pay-by-the-hour rooms down the hall.

The San Juan Hotel had its faults, certainly, but what it also had was a fantastically shitty dive bar attached to it, the place where everybody in town met up over a couple of 40oz bottles of beer to start the night before drunkenly staggering to their cars and heading off to the next shitty bar. Which, from a traveling point of view, is exactly what you want in a bar that’s literally outside your door – everyone happy and excited, psyched for the night ahead, dressed up and made up and at the exact point of drunkenness at which it seems like inviting to your table two sleepy-eyed white dudes who don’t speak your language terribly well is a really great idea.

Which is precisely how we ended up in the tiny apartment of Fernando, an anthropology student who, along with two of his friends, decided to spend his Tuesday night giving us lessons in Cuban dancing in his kitchen until we passed out in the wee hours, exhausted from throwing ourselves around like morons trying to keep up. Which, coincidentally, is about the same time that I realized that, actually, really, Mexico is probably the greatest country on earth.

We spent a couple of days in Chihuahua, wandering the wide avenues of a town that just oozes good vibes and fun times. And history, too – the place has figured in most of the major events in Mexico’s history, and the chubby-faced bandit-turned-hero-general Pancho Villa practically has a cult here. Dude invaded the US just for the fun of it back in his heyday. But Copper Canyon beckoned, and we boarded a mariachi-filled bus to Creel, where we planned to catch the train through the canyon to the coast.

Creel had a bit of backpacker life, and it was nice to talk to a few travelers for the first time since La Paz, but really it was a bit of a one-trick pony, its bars shutting too early and its hostels pushing far too hard on the guided tour garbage. But its one trick was a stunner: Creel was surrounded by beautiful yellow fields dotted with weird rock formations and Raramuri villages and lakes and lonely churches on dirt roads. From the back of a bicycle it was perfect, though the thirty kilometres of pedaling did nothing for legs still ravaged from that walk through the Chihuahuan wilderness. But a bicycle and a wide blue sky and an empty road: this is a great thing.

So we rolled from the Valley of the Erect Penises to the Valley of the Frogs to the Valley of the Mushrooms; and then we boarded one of the last trains left in Mexico – the Transferril Chihuahua Pacifico – to Posada Barrancas, on the edge of the canyon.

There are some things in the world that are worth seeing. Copper Canyon is one of them.

Walking slowly along the lip of the canyon, peering timidly over the edge, awestruck.

It’s too immense to put into words; too immense to take in, even when you’re there, staring directly into it. Especially when there are hummingbirds darting out from it, over your head, hovering and disappearing, and local villagers descending into it, completing the daily six-hour trek out of and back into the canyon, just to attend school. You can reel off figures of size and depth, but nothing compares to the staggering feeling of trying to look at something that’s just too big to look at.

We’d heard talk of a cablecar at the canyon, just little bits here and there, nothing concrete. It was new, we knew that much. We eventually caught sight of it after rounding a headland and spent the next few hours marching through the scrub to find it, mystified as to the lack of signage. But there was good reason – it was brand spanking new, and hadn’t even opened yet. The cable stretched for six kilometres directly across the canyon, and, even better, there was now a zipline traversing the entire canyon as well.

But we were a week too early. The cable cars were running, but they were empty, just beta testing. We got talking to the American engineer who was heading the project, an affable guy who told us all the ins and outs of the design, the two of us nodding our heads over-enthusiastically, throwing questions at him, trying to steer the conversation in the direction we wanted, until -

“So…” I said.

“So…” Adam said.

The engineer looked at us.

“So now you’re testing the cars, right?” I asked.

The engineer nodded.

“Do you maybe need people to test the cars?” ventured Adam.

The engineer smiled, and our hearts leapt.

“No.”

-

Four tracks in this video – the first is the mariachi classic “Camino Real de Colima” by Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlan, off the Viva Mexico y sus Canciones compilation; the second is a recording of the mariachi band that played on our Creel-bound bus; the third is “No Hay Nada Mas” from Mos Def’s career-best The Ecstatic album; and the last is the traditional “Arboles de las Barrancas”, here performed out of the blue by Texan garage-rock scumbags Black Lips, from the Rudo y Cursi soundtrack.

IN THIS: section, we’ll be bringing you music, films, recipes, games and other bits and pieces we find during our travels.

A beer Bloody Mary. What an idea, and a fantastic way to finish, or start, or spend a lazy summer’s day. We came across our first michelada in Zacatecas while watching the charros, served to us in a monstrous polystyrene cup, with enough dodgy-looking drink inside to last us a couple of hours. We were instantly hooked.

There are myriad variations on the michelada recipe – some in Guanajuato are served with oysters and prawns in them – but our favourite remains the one served to us that day in Zacatecas.

1. If you want to be truly authentic, find the largest, most environmentally offensive polystyrene cup you can. Otherwise use a pint glass or larger.

2. Rim the top of the cup with a mixture of mild Mexican chili powder and salt, to your taste.

3. In a shaker, mix together 200mL Mott’s Clamato*, the juice of two limes, a couple of dashes of Worcestershire sauce, three or four dashes of Tabasco sauce (or to taste), a pinch of mild Mexican chili powder and a pinch of salt and pepper. Shake.

4. Pour the contents of your shaker into your cup, and add some ice cubes. Now pour in a bottle of non-dark Mexican beer – Sol, Pacifico, Corona, Tecate or (to a lesser extent) Dos Equis or Bohemia Clara are all fine. Depending on the size of your cup/glass, you may have to save some for refills.

And there you are. Have fun.

* For our friends from outside the Americas, Mott’s Clamato is a canned mixture of tomato juice and clam broth put out by the Dr Pepper company – actually delicious despite sounding like something they’d drink on Fear Factor. If you can’t find it use V8 juice or plain tomato juice instead.

WE LEFT: Huajumar in the morning under light cloud, still excited about going to work on the farm despite the repeated delays. We knew extremely little about it – what work we’d be doing, how remote it was, how many people would be there – but the mystery made it more thrilling, and we were keen to have a new experience and learn some new things. We arrived in Yepachi at about 9:30am, grabbed some quick breakfast, went to the little community centre where a woman unlocked the door to the dusty computer room – looked at our emails and, sure enough, there was one from the farm, explaining that we probably wouldn’t be able to get a lift and would instead need to hike out to the farm, some 25km away. The first 8km, the email said, would be easy to hitchhike, as it was along a well-used mining road. The rest we would need to walk.

So we strapped on our backpacks and headed out, down the mining road. In a moment of stunning idiocy, we decided not to take any food and only a litre of water. I don’t know what we were thinking – perhaps that we’d pass a small village along the way? – but that’s what happened.

In any case, there was certainly no hitchhiking. We saw a few cars pass over those first couple of hours as we puffed our way over the mountains, but they were invariably traveling in the wrong direction. We spent a while trying to determine which was the right turnoff – the email had said there would be rough-looking road off to the right after five miles, but there were several rough-looking roads off to the right after five miles. Eventually a truck stopped and let us know which one it was – “But hurry,” he said in Spanish, “there’s a storm coming.”

*          *          *

We set off. It was now well after midday and we decided we’d be running the risk of arriving under darkness if we were to carry our large packs the whole way, so we hid them under a tree off the side of the track, figuring that we could get a lift back to pick them up after we arrived. We turned the corner and found ourselves in the middle of a herd of cows – and two bulls. The bulls immediately spun toward us, staring and stamping and roaring. The first one lowered its head, and we did the valiant thing and sprinted as fast as we could to the cover of nearby trees, bushbashing for several hundred metres to get around them.

And then the storm hit.

Lightning crashed on every side of us, echoing endlessly through the myriad valleys. And the rain poured and poured. We tried to refill our pitiful little water bottle but we collected less water that way than by simply standing in the rain with our tongues out. We were soaked and hungry and thirsty and tired, but we’d gone too far to turn back. We kept walking.

As the day swept into late afternoon we stopped more and more often to consider turning back, each time electing to push onwards. By the time it got to 5 o’clock we’d gone too far – we would not make it back to Yepachi before dark. But we were becoming increasingly worried – we hadn’t seen anyone on the track the entire time, and doubt was slowly growing that we were even on the right road. It had also become obvious that this track would be completely impassable by car – entire sections had collapsed into creek beds and at one point we had to wade for thirty metres through a river to rejoin the track – meaning we wouldn’t be able to retrieve our packs without trekking all the way back out again. We started to panic.

*          *          *

Part of our worry was that Chihuahua is well known as the most dangerous state in Mexico, and several people had advised us (rightly or wrongly, I’m not sure) that Yepachi itself was a dangerous place to be. A hell of a lot of drug traffic comes through the state, and to be alone on deserted tracks through the forest after dark with no camping gear was a very worrying proposition.

By 6:30pm, we were ready to collapse. We were still in deep forest, with no signs of paddocks or clearings. We’d had to climb over a gate that was wired shut with barbed wire, which didn’t bode well. And then – Adam spotted it. Some paddocks on a hillside, not too far ahead. A little while after, we came to a nice looking gate. Past that, and we could see it – a few buildings in a clearing. The ranch! Relief melted over us, and we practically ran the last few hundred metres through the encroaching semi-darkness.

Until we hit the river.

We tried everything to get across. It was only about fifteen metres wide, but the current was too strong, the water too deep, the rocks too jagged to walk across. We stripped to our undies, tried to swim it. But it was too strong, too late, too dark and we were exhausted and defeated.

*          *          *

Oh, but the panic. We’d considered turning back so many times, but in truth we’d only ever been worried that we’d arrive after dark, not that we’d be unable to get there at all. And when we saw that ranch up ahead, I could only think of it as a triumph of faith over doubt, of determination over indecisiveness. But that goddamn river… the slow dawn of realization that we couldn’t cross it… the understanding of what that would entail… I’ve never felt anything like it.

We yelled at the farm for a while, waved our arms, threw ourselves about. It was less than fifty metres away. Some dogs sprinted down to the river on the opposite show, barking and making a scene, but no lights came on in the building, and nobody came out. The place was deserted. And it was now after dark.

“Shit. I’ve never been in a position this bad,” I called out to Adam over the roar of the river.

“I know,” he yelled back, “Me either. Never.”

“What do we do?” I called, “What the fuck do we do now?”

He didn’t respond, just stared at the opposite river with his eyes hard and his shoulders slumped.

*          *          *

We walked back up the hill, cleared a spot in the dirt and lay down to sleep. It got cold quickly, so we huddled under the one jacket I’d brought, still soaking from the rain earlier. We shivered and swore, and every so often one of us would get up to pace quickly up and down the path and swear some more. By this point I was absolutely dizzy with thirst and for a while was scared to fall asleep, until I realized the rocks beneath me would make it impossible anyway. At length I found in my bag the remainder of a tube of Vegemite I’d brought with me from Australia, and we portioned it out in thin black lines down our fingers, greedily gulped down.

And then, at midnight, it started to rain again, gently at first, but then with increasing persistence.

“We need to get out of here”, said Adam. And so we did.

*          *          *

We got some water into our bottle from a stream, speckled with red dust, cloudy but drinkable. We wolfed it down, not caring anymore about getting sick, just needing liquid. We marched through the night, slowly but evenly, like mules, Adam guiding himself by the light of the full moon and me, vision as untrustworthy as ever, with my headlamp focussed steadily on his mud-encrusted shoes.

Back through the creeks, not even bothering now to remove our shoes, a waste of time and effort. The soft uneven squish – I’d lost my left sock trying to cross the river, and my bare foot created a different kind of squelch – and the soft rush of our breath mixed in the cold pre-dawn air. Eventually a clearing, where we sat and tried to capture some sleep. Adam, somehow, miraculously, starting a small fire from wood that had been drenched with rain all night – note to self, when you have children make sure they attend Boy Scouts – and then waiting for the steely glow of dawn to wash over everything before pressing on.

We found our backpacks and guitar – still somehow unmolested and undamaged – and stumbled the last mile down to the mining road, where we waited half an hour before a truck kindly stopped to pick us up. The only problem was that the truck had, until very recently, been carrying a very large, moist and sticky load of manure in its tray.

Thus it was that after twenty-four hours and forty-odd kilometres of hiking, we arrived back in Yepachi hungry, thirsty, achingly tired, and ankle deep in pig shit.

*          *          *

As a footnote to this episode – after arriving back in Yepachi, we went straight to the local restaurant to stuff our faces with whatever we could afford. While there, we got talking to a friendly young guy who spoke a bit of English.

“So what do you do?” asked Adam, “Do you work in the mines?”

The man’s eyes shifted back and forth; he looked at his friends, smiled, and nodded slowly.

“Yes,” he said slowly, “That’s what I do. The mines.”

He and his friends walked outside. Adam and I finished our meals and walked outside for a cigarette, and there, across the dusty clearing, were the man and his friends, slipping on bullet-proof vests and hoisting massive machine guns to their shoulders before jumping in their pickup truck and peeling off down the road. We didn’t know what to make of it – security at the mines, maybe?

Two minutes later a similar-looking pickup truck pulled up, full of guys in bullet-proof vests, their machine guns hanging out the window, the barrels pointed lazily at the restaurant, the school, the general store. One of the men leaned out.

“Hey gringos!,” he shouted, “You want some marijuana? Cocaine?”

We shook our heads slowly, pacing slowly out of the scope of the guns, and the men drove off. If there’s one thing we’ve learnt from our travels, it’s not to purchase illegal drugs from men holding powerful artillery.

-

The song on this episode is Dick Dale’s epic “Spanish Kiss”, which we’ve been saving especially for an occasion like this.

AND THAT’S: when it all started to turn around.

Up out of San Blas, still scratching at our thousands of mosquito bites, bathing ourselves in the anti-itch cream we’d bought at the chemist and which did precisely nothing to help us, we headed back to Tepic.

We’d passed through Tepic twice before and had come to think of it as little more than an overgrown bus station, but there we found blessed respite from the humidity and mosquitos that had plagued us for the past several weeks. For the first time in a long time we could sit outside for hours without coming away looking like we were slowly melting and smelling like we’d been bathing in someone’s garbage. Instead we came away with energy and mojo restored, and the next day we decided to attempt to reach Ceboruco Volcano, an active volcano that lay a few hours southeast.

This was the first time since the Sierra San Pedro Martir National Park that we’d done anything even slightly difficult – we couldn’t find anybody, anywhere, who knew how to get to the volcano without a car – but after a few buses, a hike and a friendly taxi driver, it worked. And even though the volcano wasn’t the most spectacular thing in the world (the endless lava fields, 8-bit and charcoal black, notwithstanding) the entire day had a great feel about it, the glow of starting over again as we made our way through the tiny, beautiful towns and blue agave fields that encircle Ceboruco.

That happened to be the day we were due to head north, on our way toward a farm in the wilderness of Chihuahua state on which we’d organized to work for a few weeks. It was a couple of days away by bus and our first stop was Ciudad Obregon in Sonora state, many miles north. Whatever good vibes we’d managed to manufacture over the course of the day dissipated fairly quickly in the face of a fifteen-hour bus ride that stopped with swearing-under-your-breath regularity for toilet breaks and security checkpoints that involved us all being herded off the bus to wait in the darkness for half an hour, even at 4 o’clock in the morning.

It’s worth stopping here for a moment to mention the drug wars, because for obvious reasons it’s something we’re not able to capture on video terribly often. People are dying, here, with stunningly mundane frequency. Every day, the headlines scream of the latest massacre. A lot of people warned us away from Chihuahua altogether; others restricted their warnings to the border areas with the US. As to who is doing the killing – who knows? The media says that it is cartels attempting to wipe out or move in on other cartels, with the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels being the major players, as well as the Zetas, who were formerly the highly-trained mercenary army of the Gulf cartel but as of February are an independent force in the conflict. A significant number of Mexicans we’ve spoken to believe that the Calderon government is behind most of the killings, either to wipe out the cartels once and for all, or to muscle in on the action themselves, or simply to create such disorder that the US is forced into increasing financial aid to Mexico. That may be nothing more than simple rumourmongering but it demonstrates a wide distrust on behalf of Mexicans toward their leaders, and anyway it’s certainly true that Calderon has enlisted more than 45,000 soldiers in the war on the cartels. Several hundred women were horrifically murdered and mutilated in Ciudad Juarez a couple of years back and still nobody knows who did it or why. Mostly, the consensus from Mexicans is the same as that expressed by Hilary Clinton a couple of weeks back: that Mexico will soon be indistinguishable from Colombia twenty years ago. And that nobody seems to know how to stop it.

Heading north from Tepic to Ciudad Obregon – the latter of which is still several hours drive from the US border – we were stopped no less than a dozen times for drug searches. On the way from Sonora to Chihuahua, we were stopped several times more, this time at checkpoints that look like something from a middle eastern war zone, all sandbags and rifle towers and twitchy-looking young men holding ridiculous amounts of firepower against their chests. A nervewracking thing, especially when there is as little trust toward police and military as there is in Mexico.

But away from all that Chihuahua was absolutely enthralling. The countryside was as magnificent as we’ve come across, and we sat in a daze watching it all go past, hour after hour on the bus out of Ciudad Obregon, and in our idiotic stupor we even watched the bus trundle through the town we were supposed to be farming in and only realized our mistake an hour later, many miles away. But even that was okay – everything around us was beautiful, and we spent a while trying and failing to hitchhike under a soft sunshower that blew by overhead, before throwing our stuff into a nearby hotel and sitting on the stairs with a beer, under the stars, looking up and imagining our next few weeks on the farm, wondering whether we’d get through it, both of us excited and hopeful and looking forward to the days that lay ahead.

Of course that entire idea would collapse in a shambolic heap very quickly. But that’s for next episode.

-

Music this time around comes from Mexican legends Los Tigres Del Norte with “Amor de Madre”, followed by the Shadows (yes, okay, not terribly Mexican, but still, excellent song) with “Geronimo”.

AND SO: Independence Day came upon us.

Mexico’s Independence Day is usually a pretty big occasion but this year was special – it marked two hundred years since Father Miguel Hidalgo made his famous speech of defiance against the Spanish overlords who had ruled Mexico to that point, the ‘Grito de Dolores’ – “Death to bad government! Death to the gachupines!”. The ensuing war cost Hidalgo his life – he was executed by firing squad, had his body decapitated and his head suspended in a cage for ten years from a building in Guanajuato, until the War of Independence was won in 1821.

This year also marks 100 years since the beginning of the Mexican Revolution, which wasn’t quite such an epic tale of heroism. The dictator Porfirio Diaz and his successor, Victoriano Huerta, were opposed by a number of different factions around the country, who ended up coming together to end their reign. Mexico remembers a group of four heroes, all generals during the revolution – Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata, Venustiano Carranza and Alvaro Obregon, who are all widely feted. Trouble is, as soon as the revolution neared its end, Carranza had Zapata assassinated, and was subsequently assassinated himself by Obregon. A couple of years later, Pancho Villa was shot to death in Chihuahua, also probably on Obregon’s orders. Obregon was then assassinated five years later. And that probably tells you everything you need to know about Mexican politics.

The celebration itself, though – at least in Puerto Vallarta – was basically a non-event, starting with a muffled bang and ending with a barely-audible whimper. Unfortunately, with things the way they are at the moment, the entire area of the celebration was cordoned off by soldiers who conducted cavity searches on each and every person entering. No drinking was allowed in the streets and the few restaurants and bars who remained open felt free to triple their prices. It was fun to wander about the thousands of people milling the streets, though, with music playing and everybody shouting and dancing and having a good (sober) time. The fireworks were spectacular, and it seemed like the night was getting ready to catapult itself into a crazy drunken orgy of awesome. And that’s when everybody went home.

We waited another day to see whether anything would happen, but of course it didn’t. So we packed our bags and headed north to the small beach town of San Blas, which was once one of the busiest ports on the Pacific but is now a sleepy surfer hangout famous as having one of the longest waves in the world.

We found ourselves a grass bungalow on the beach, threw our backpacks down and celebrated. “Ah, this is more like it,” I thought, “Real travel again. No more hawkers, traffic, noise. Just us and a guitar and the sand and the sea.”

What I hadn’t considered was that we had to share a single mattress and the fan we’d been provided with didn’t function. See, the thing about San Blas is that it was once one of the busiest ports on the Pacific, but it had to be abandoned because the humidity and surrounding mangroves meant that it was infested with massive swarms of mosquitos that spread major epidemics of disease throughout the town.

The humidity killed us, and all night we stretched and ripped at a mosquito net that clearly wasn’t designed to fit two large sweaty men under it. In the end it covered nothing, and we awoke to find our bodies as freakshows, festering swamps of swelling and merciless itching.

It was a little hard to enjoy San Blas after that. We packed our bags and headed to Tepic, a couple of hours east. Tepic! Who would have guessed that little Tepic, the town we’d thought of only as a place to change buses, would be the town that started to turn everything around for us? But that will wait til next time.

-

The tunes this episode are made up of a recording of a band on the streets of Puerto Vallarta – if anybody recognizes the song they are playing (or, even more unlikely, if anybody recognizes the band themselves), please get in touch. That’s followed by the elegant dreampop of Capullo’s “Reencarnacion” and the summery screams of Mr Racoon’s “Y lo Olvido”. Both the latter are available on Fonogramaticos Vol. 8, a compilation put out by the we’ve-already-mentioned-how-great-it-is-but-let’s-do-it-again music blog Club Fonograma, which is available for free download here.

OUR FERRY: from La Paz to Mazatlan turned out to be a decommissioned cruise ship, complete with disco, swimming pool, observation deck, bar and games room. Not a bad way to spend a night, even if we didn’t get a bed and were forced to watch Armageddon dubbed in Spanish.

The sun rose over Mazatlan and it was immediately obvious that here was a city unlike others we’d been to in Mexico. Mazatlan had energy; it had colour and style and movement, all despite the raging humidity, which hadn’t dropped since our trip across the Sea of Cortez.

We did little in Mazatlan, spending most of our time cruising the many colourful plazas and grabbing a drink at one of the sprinkling of truly outstanding bars stretching back from the waterfront.

And, so long as we continued to do little except sit and drink, things went well. As soon as we tried to do anything more, they fell apart. We tried to hop across to nearby Stone Island (Isla de las Piedras), having heard stories of white sand beaches and lonely taco stands, only to find the beach brown and crusty and the taco stands filled with a non-stop conga line of hawkers hocking their wares. I continued my incredible run of injuries by slicing through my little finger when I misjudged the height of the ceiling fan in our dingy hotel room; the next night, after spending hours psyching ourselves up for a big Saturday night on the town, I fell into a fever and spent the night lying in bed trying not to throw up.

The next day, we headed south again.

Puerto Vallarta must once have been an incredible destination – cobblestone streets, miles of clean beaches, a backdrop of incredibly lush green mountains – but it seems those days are quickly fading beneath a landslide of group tours and ridiculously oversized (but completely tasteless) margaritas. It didn’t help any that the storms continued to dump all kinds of crap onto the beaches and transformed the ocean into a brownish goo that gave the sensation of swimming in something halfway between minestrone soup and raw sewerage.

We found a cheap hotel and a good quesadilla stand, bought our first bottle of tequila and filled our days with walks around the countryside and complaining about the heat while the rainy season that would eventually leave parts of Mexico in ruins continued to rage around us.

Trapped in a rainstorm of truly epic proportions one night, we stumbled, dripping and miserable, into a dimly-lit bar off one of the rapidly-flooding main streets. Inside, a bloated American fellow sat chewing on a cigar and ploughing through what he told us was his fifteenth Corona of the evening.

“Where are you from?” we asked him.

“New York!” he bellowed, eyes unsteady.

“New York!” we repeated, with the awestruck tone that’s mandatory when talking to someone from New York.

He smiled grimly. “Well, actually Connecticut,” he yelled, “but the thing is -”

Without warning he abruptly stood up, took two calm steps toward the door, and issued a stream of milky vomit that collected briefly on the cobblestone street before being picked up by the rainwater and carried off.

“- the thing is,” he continued loudly without missing a beat, “Is that nobody seems to know where Connecticut is,” and then he fell into a contemplative silence.

This would prove to be our classiest interaction with a foreigner in Puerto Vallarta.

-

For music in this episode we’ve got the tubariffic “Sin Evidencia” from Sinaloa’s very own Banda El Recodo (who’ve been around since 1938!), which I could happily listen to all day, and another selection from the band that is fast firming as ‘Favourite Mexican Band’ around the Planet Kapow offices – “Suerte” by Jovenes y Sexys.

The desert heat had sent us a little crazy, and we’d built La Paz into a mythical dreamland in our heads, a place where the bars heaved with the force of hundreds of drunken partygoers, where our toes would sink into the endless white sand, where we would light bonfires on the beach and watch the sun rise.

As it happened, we arrived to a perfect sunset over that white sand we’d dreamed of, and the beachfront promenade was full of people and music and action. But that was as close to the dream as La Paz came. The place was a ghost town. We checked into our hotel to find ourselves the only people there; went swimming at the beach only to be stung by jellyfish within seconds. We crawled through the strip of bars lining the ocean but the only other person we came across was a woman sobbing in the back of a seedy club after being hit by her boyfriend on the street outside, her child sitting patiently at her feet.

As usually happens, though, after a couple of days we started to get into the swing of things, finding a nice little bar in the back streets where we could chat with the regulars and run through a sampling of Mexico’s many tequila brands. We took the bus up the coast to Tecolote, where we swam for hours in the perfect water, with old men playing dominoes at the bar and dark grey pelicans swooping hungrily on the schools of fish that swam around our ankles.

But still, there was something missing, some nagging absence. La Paz was the first town to be settled on the Baja peninsula, the capital of Baja California Sur state, a former hangout of pirates and lowlifes, captured briefly by the US and even more briefly becoming its own republic. It was a place that had seen a lot. It shouldn’t have felt so sterile.

As the week wore on, more people started to filter into our hotel – members of the hardcore travel set, whose stories and plans dwarfed our own. There was a pair of underwater filmmakers from Austria and Germany who had been traveling for fifteen years straight, and a salty old German sailor who had begun traveling in Africa in the late sixties and now held the title of ‘Sealord of the Eastern Caribbean’, or something equally preposterous. There was a Portuguese couple, Kiko and Maria, traveling the world for two years making a cooking show, and Sam, a spritely Englishman in the middle of circling the world by bicycle – he’d already covered 40,000km.

All drawn inexorably and for reasons unfathomable to La Paz, a city with all the cleanliness, ambience and culture of a newly opened shopping mall. Coming across people with these incredible tales in such a place was mystifying, like stumbling upon a cabal of master criminals shoplifting makeup from Target.

On our last day, in a last-ditch balls-out effort to get something remarkable from La Paz, we went with Sam down to the beach and asked one of the boats there to take us out looking for whale sharks. The Sea of Cortez is fully stocked with amazing marine life – four species of whale, including blue whales; sea lions, turtles, manta rays doing backflips, as well as whale sharks – and we figured we were in with a good chance. We were too cheap to shell out for three separate snorkelling masks, so we only hired one, figuring we’d be able to share it once the stampede of amazing sealife began.

So off we went. The roar of the motor was too loud to speak to each other, so we kept our eyes focussed on the horizon, looking, searching, not really sure what we were looking for, exactly, but looking nevertheless. The boat drew a large circle, then another. And another. We started to tire. Another circle. And another. There was nothing, nothing but endless grey waves. Defeated, we asked to be taken back to shore.

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For the soundtrack of this episode we’ve gotten perhaps more funky than is advisable for two gangly white dudes, with “El Ciclyn” from La Sonora Dinamita. We’d also like to take this opportunity to recommend Kiko and Maria’s excellent travel-cooking site – www.eatheworld.com (note that there is only one ‘t’ in the address), as well as Sam’s blog of his utterly mindboggling cycling odyssey at cyclertw.blogspot.com. Sam is raising money for a very worthy charity called Shelterbox and any donations would be warmly welcomed.

OUT INTO: the desert, and though we’d spent a Sydney winter dreaming of the heat, we hadn’t really prepared ourselves for it. We cut fairly pathetic figures as we stumbled into San Ignacio as the sun beat mercilessly down – dripping with sweat, haggard and glowing like something highly radioactive. Collapsing under the first piece of shade we could find, we bought a couple of beers and were privy to an extended discourse on Mexican history from an old man who spoke no English (of the entire thirty-minute monologue I think I understood three words, two of which were the words for “Mexican” and “history”). We smiled, nodded and made all the all the agreeable “Mmm-hmm” and “Is that so?” grunts we could think up, grateful for the shade and the cool beer that turned lukewarm within minutes.

San Ignacio is a wonderful town, stuck in time, with a leafy village square, a beautiful church, and canyons and petroglyphs nearby. I wish I could say we saw more of it. But with our internal organs baking under skin that was rapidly approaching the look and texture of pork crackling, we relented, retreated, retired to a hotel room, lying face up and semi-naked under a slowly revolving fan, backs sticking to bedsheets like velcro, with the only sound our constant complaining.

So the next day, Adam’s birthday, we packed up and headed for the coast. Mulege was our destination, a small town that achieved limited fame as the only prison in the New World that had no bars – surrounded by desert, with no means of escaping that wouldn’t end in a horrible, thirsty demise among the cacti, the prisoners were even allowed to keep mistresses in the local village and had a simple rope tied around the prison grounds at night.

Sounds like paradise – and it would be, if not for that constant burn rolling in from the desert. In Mulege we found no refuge from the heat – if anything, it was worse, soaring to forty-six degrees. But we made the five-kilometre trek from town out along the river to the Sea of Cortez, past houses and groves of palm trees utterly demolished by the hurricane that blew in last year, with crazed looks in our eyes, desperate to throw ourselves into the water. The water, hot as a bath, wasn’t exactly refreshing, but it sufficed. We ate lunch at a shack on the water, looking out at the azure vistas before us, and then retreated once again to the hotel and passed out. By the time we awoke, Mulege had been taken over by a carnival, all light and sound, and we wandered, dazed, among the partygoers, downing some quick tacos before passing out again.

We were defeated. We needed to escape. La Paz lay before us, with the promise of endless white-sand beaches, throbbing bars, sunset beers with other travelers. We should have seen the warning signs in those sort of images, but the heat had ruined us, and the next day we boarded the southbound bus.

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For this episode we’ve dipped into the catalogues of a couple of home-grown Mexican bands, opening with Jovenes y Sexys’ wistful “El Reloj” and closing with Piyama Party’s upbeat “Fan de Carcass”. You can find these along with a whole lot of other great stuff from Mexico and South America over at the Club Fonograma blog.

THE TUNNEL: that leads to the bridge that leads to Mexico is so low-key and inconspicuous that for a while we couldn’t even find it – we had to approach a cop to point it out to us. And across we went, no customs, no stamping of the passport, only a tinny voice that shouted, “Hey you, no photos!” from a tiny speaker box when Adam tried to take some shots of the three-hour queue of cars coming from Mexico, stretching to the horizon.

Down some stairs, through a turnstile, and there we were, in Tijuana – the whole process so mystifyingly simple that we wandered back and forth for a time, searching for someone to hassle us, some ridiculous queue to join, almost crossing back into the US by accident.

By the time we got to Tijuana we had been lectured about it at length by other travelers, people on the bus, taxi drivers, whoever – it had become a mythical city of danger and chaos, a place you could be confident of being shot and / or decapitated within minutes of arriving. All nonsense, of course, but nonsense has a habit of becoming more believable the more often it’s repeated, so we boarded a bus to Ensenada and watched Mexico unfold.

In Ensenada we found a deserted city, rapidly vacated after the end of the college breaks in the States, no cruise ships in port, just us and our backpacks. We wandered up and down the malecon, chowing down on plates of ceviche and fish tacos, the condiments lined up before us in a rainbow of flavour and chili. The people in Ensenada were incredibly friendly and helpful – we’ve since found this to be the case all over Mexico, but never quite like Ensenada. At our hostel we found a random assortment of travelers from Mexico, Switzerland, the US – and Gabi, who ran the hostel and with whom we were able to try out a little more Spanish and make believe that we were actually improving (we weren’t).

We had heard a little about El Parque Nacional Sierra de San Pedro Martir, which lay a little further south, a place of bobcats and condors and bighorn sheep, but with no public transport to the park we were left in a bit of a bind. We were talking about it to Gabi one night when she interjected with “I have a car.” What followed was three days of harassment and nagging until Gabi relented and loaded us, Pris the Swiss and Gilberto, from Mexico, into her 4WD with shopping bags full to bursting with bread, ham, beer, potatoes and Jack cheese.

It took a couple of hours to reach but entering the park was to enter another world, first opening up into wide desert plains, strewn with boulders, mountains looking like giant mounds of rubble, nothing in the dirt but a few sad-looking cacti, roadrunners darting across the road in front of the car beep beep – and then, suddenly, rounding a bend and the landscape changing utterly, now endless seas of conifers, chipmunks racing laps around the treetrunks, condors hovering high above, and everywhere the smell of pine.

We set up our tent in a clearing near some boulders, started a fire and stuffed our faces with the ham and cheese, grown lukewarm and sweaty, respectively, in the back of the car, and grabbed a beer. What followed was an incredible night, under an acid-washed sky flooded with stars, so many that there was less dark space than light. Guitars playing all night, stories being traded – brilliant, so brilliant, though between the Mexicans and the Swiss I think we heard Radiohead’s “Creep” several dozen times that night, in a variety of versions, including soft jazz – and then a freezing, uncomfortable night on stony ground with not nearly enough blankets.

After an aborted effort at a mountain hike we were off again, Adam and I dropped off in the tiny town of Colonet to continue our journey south. Gabi, Gilberto and Pris were amazing people to spend time with and with any luck we’ll run across them again, but we had to say goodbye. It was time to head into the desert.

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The soundtrack to this episode is made up of another excellent Calexico selection, “Minas de Cobre (For Better Metal)” off The Black Light, Bibio’s “Lover’s Carvings”, off his wonderful Ambivalence Avenue LP of last year, and M. Ward’s “Duet For Guitars #3″, from his 2003 masterpiece, The Transfiguration of Vincent.

AND HERE: we are. Welcome to the very first episode of Planet Kapow, as Adam and I fly out of Sydney for the glorious excess of the United States. Erin and Danielle will follow us over in mid-November; for now we have a couple of months to explore Mexico. But first – the U.S.

America: a population constantly in conversation with itself, one long unending group psychiatry appointment. Everybody there is possessed by the need to get things off their chest, weights off their shoulders, monkeys off their back and worries off their mind – and they’ll happily do so with whoever’s listening, whoever’s closest. A question like “Excuse me, do you know where the bus station is?” might result in an answer that covers that person’s last two marriages, a weird rash that keeps reoccurring on their left buttock, and their enlightened thoughts on the issue of medicinal marijuana, but leave you no closer to finding a bus.

This is especially true of L.A., a city where people say things like, “Screw you, scumbag!”, and “Hey, peace, man!” without any sort of irony at all. A city of actors, where every immigration officer, bus driver and waitress puts on a show, hoping that you or one of the people around you may be a talent agent about to give them their big break.

But for all that, it needs to be said – Americans are some of the most open, helpful and friendly people in the world. It pains me to admit it, but Australia could afford to take notes. Any issue that we had while in L.A.would be workshopped between complete strangers on the bus to come up with the best solution. Any time we were in trouble, or even looked vaguely confused, people would flock to us to see if they could lend a hand. Everybody wants to help.

Unfortunately there’s no helping L.A., which, without a car, is simply an impossible behemoth of a city. It took us six hours to get from the airplane to our hostel at Venice Beach, some five kilometers away. And aside from its stylish pizza joints and semi-permanent population of impossibly cool skaters, Venice Beach itself is little more than a strip of dirt that, despite being in constant contact with the ocean, refuses to turn to mud.

San Diego was different – and something of a surprise: a city of wide open spaces, grand buildings and a beautiful harbour. And in Ocean Beach, a hostel crawling with the young and inebriated, attracted to the place like lemmings to a cliff, stumbling down narrow stairwells and shouting down phone lines to friends far away. Most of them under 21 and thus unable to drink legally, but they found a way. Of course they found a way – wine bottles stashed under jackets, ID’s altered and forged, the passports of the elder statesmen smuggled out of the bars to a line of impatient teenagers waiting around the block.

A fun couple of nights for Adam and I – the first ending with a midnight swim in the harbour with some Canadians and a Finn, our feet slashed on the rocks beneath; the second ending up at a house in the suburbs with a large group of San Diegans who had been impressed with our (slightly faked) Australian accents and brought us back for a long, long night of trading stories and playing boardgames in front of a freakishly big TV with a Bud Light in hand. At 5:30am we found ourselves in the back of a pickup truck, keeping our heads low so as not to be seen by the cops, telegraph poles and signs for burger joints passing by overhead, pale in the shallow dawn light. We pulled up at our hostel only minutes before reception opened for the day, passing out on our clean, paid-for beds that we would have to vacate in another four hours.

And then on to Mexico – and oh, the convenience! A $2.50 ticket on the San Diego trolley takes you the last few miles to the border town of San Ysidro. And then – no customs, no passports, no scans, no nothing, really – just an unmanned tunnel. On the other side of that tunnel: Mexico. But that will have to wait until next time.

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The tracks used on this video are “Marathon”, by up-and-comers Tennis, Toro Y Moi’s chilled-out blissathon “Taramak”, and sunbaked-desert-guitar kings Calexico’s magnificent “Tres Avisos”.

We are off. Lachlan & I are in Ensenada, Mexico.

On the 26th of August we made some very sorry adios’s to our buenos amigos and spent 13 hours in the air to LAX.

The flight was quite ok. The entertainment system was good and there was reasonable leg room way back in the last row of the aeroplane. The food was even edible.

I was lucky enough to sit next to Luis, a cool dude from Mexico City who had been living in Melbourne for the past 2 years or so doing his MBA. Thanks to him we now have mas lugares y cosas to see in Mexico.

After the 1-2 hours in Immigration at LAX we managed to navigate the LA pubic transport system to Venice Beach and crashed at a hostel for the night (after a nice 6 pack or two of Fat Tyre beer). The next day we bussed it into Downtown LA, found the Greyhound bus terminal and proceeded to spend 4 hours or so in some heavy traffic on the way down to San Diego. Luckily the bus had free WIFI.

San Diego turned out to be a really nice place. We stayed 2 nights out on Ocean Beach at the hostel there and met some cool peeps from Finland & Canada and on the 2nd night we befriended some locals who took us to their place for some beers and were even kind enough to drive us back to the hostel in the back of their truck.

San Diego is a really easy city to get around and seems a world away from LA. The people are just as friendly but there aren’t nearly as many people trying to out crazy each other. Downtown (Gas Lamp) area seems to be where all the action is. Balboa park was cool, as well as the harbour that is home to some retired warships

From San Diego we took the trolley/train down to San Ysidro and crossed the border to Tijuana. Probably the easiest border crossing I have ever made. No immigration. No stamps. But it looks like we were meant to get some sort of card & stamp so will have to sort that out tomorrow here in Ensenada. This was our first attempt at speaking Español. “Dos boletos a Ensenada por favor”.

Ahh Ensenada. This is our first proper taste of Mexico. We are staying at “The Ensenada Backpacker”, a great little place run by a lovely chica by the name of Gabi. This is our second night here and I must say I am really enjoying Mexico so far. We’ve had some great tacos, met some friendly Mexican folks, washed some underpants and I bought a pair of pantalones.

Tacos so far have been about $12MXN ($1USD) and are muy delicioso! I am really going to enjoy the food here.

It looks like Ensenada has a few things to check out, then from here we might try to somehow make our way to Sierra San Pedro Martir Nation Park but it looks like public transport is going to be a little difficult.

Photos and hopefully the first Planet Kapow Mexico episode 01 video to come soon.

¡Hasta Luego!

1 DAY TO GO

Well, here we are. No more guesswork, no more counting. Tomorrow we will be on a plane bound for America. Fourteen hours of cramped seats and pushing past cranky tired people to get to the damned bathroom and endlessly looking out the window and turbulence when you’re trying to pee and probable deep vein thrombosis. Fourteen hours, and then it all begins.

In a few days we will be in Mexico, at the tail-end of summer. And in about four weeks, we’ll be working on a farm, deep in Chihuahua state, a colossal ranch of canyons and rivers and herds of wild buffalo.

Our bags are packed. This is everything we’ve been waiting for.

For a few months now, I had it in my head that on the day that we were due to leave, I would post up a message on the website saying “EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS WILL HAPPEN TODAY”. The phrase had just wandered into my head one night, and it became my mantra. It was scribbled all over calendars on the date we were due to leave. It chanted endlessly through my mind. I was utterly convinced of its genius. It was only a couple of days ago when, on a whim, I typed the phrase into a Google search that I realized it was, in fact, the name of an album by Brian Eno and David Byrne from a couple of years back. I’d even downloaded it onto my hard drive at one point, though I don’t recall ever listening to it.

So I need a new phrase to end on, and, since I’m already infringing on the intellectual copyrights of mid-70′s musical luminaries, I may as well go for the big one – the four little words that we’ve all been repeating, half-consciously, over and over and over in the period between wake and sleep for such a very long time.

Hey, ho, let’s go.

10 DAYS TO GO

visit grandmother. check.

wander for three hours through Ray’s Outdoors, only to end up buying nothing. check.

waste hours looking for a way to get money out overseas without costing myself, like, eleven dollars each time, only to give up and fall onto the kitchen floor, utterly defeated. check.

think about throwing out a t-shirt i almost certainly won’t end up taking, but then leave it in the cupboard anyway. check.

look up the spanish translation of “sausage roll”. check.

look longingly out the window. check.

…

Ten days to go. Let’s do this!

16 DAYS TO GO

SUN, SUN: sun, sun, sun, sun, sun.

I had this thought in my head that perhaps getting four days up in beautiful, UV-soaked northern Queensland might give me my sunshine fix and leave me relaxed for my last couple of weeks in Sydney. Of course it just made me more desperate – it was just a lousy tease of what’s to come over the next few months. 

Adam had the right idea. He’s already up and away on his travels – Rockhampton now, on the Sunshine Coast, where “How’s it going, mate?” is a one-syllable slur of a sentence without any movement of lips or tongue (“Howzigahmate?”) and the weather sits at a comfortable 25 degrees. Soon to Darwin, where men are men and women are often also men and the weather sits at a nice, sweaty 28. After that, he’ll have only a couple of days to shiver and bitch in Sydney before the flight to L.A., where women spend twelve hours a day wearing nothing but bikinis and rollerskates (or so I’ve gathered from television).

The four days Erin and I spent in Townsville and Mission Beach with my family were incredible but too short. Every day we spent lounging in the ocean while staggered waves of clouds passed overhead, or tossing a football around the backyard or bushwalking past mammoth trees straight out of Jurassic Park and dinner plate-sized spiders hanging in their webs, straight out of Arachnophobia. (Honestly, I don’t mind spiders generally, but I’ve never seen any even close to the size of these ones and it gives me douche chills to think that they’ll probably be even bigger in the Amazon.) 

And then, like any good family gathering, each night quickly devolved into endless card games and drunken bickering about the endless card games. It was excellent. Possibly the last time I’ll see mum and dad before I go, and almost certainly the last time I’ll see my little sister, it was a wonderful weekend and I miss them all already.

Now all that’s left is to power through these last two weeks of work. Both Adam and I felt the effects of the Yellow Fever vaccine last week, coming down with aches and pains, fevers and chills. The entire length of my spine, from my hips to my skull, burned and ached – if that was a taste of the real thing, I’m hells glad we got those vaccinations. There’s one more to come – the final rabies shot – and then we should be immune to everything (except bus accidents, snakes, spiders, gunshot wounds, Colombian paramilitaries, Mexican drug cartels, active volcanoes, piranhas, jaguars, drug overdoses, drowning, decapitation, Dengue fever, quicksand, stabbing and well-aimed karate chops). We’ll be practically invincible.

Today, as part of ‘Meet the Kapowers’ week, it’s Erin.

1. Chengdu, China

I don’t know what it was about Chengdu (aka “Can Do”) that I liked so much. It may have been that the city gave me my first shower in 6 days, or that for the first time in two weeks the temperature was above 2 degrees, or that the altitude allowed me to breathe again (me having arrived in the city from the high mountains of Szechuan) – I don’t know what it was exactly, but it was rad and I was deliriously happy while I was there. 

Chengdu isn’t smoggy like other Chinese cities I have visited; locals get around on motorised scooters and it has a wonderful green centre. Being a city of 4 million people (the size of Sydney) you get the urban feeling of hustle and bustle without the feeling of chaos that is so common with other Chinese cities.  There are cool university hangouts, cafes and bars. There are great restaurants. The public transport is cheap and efficient. There are several different markets to visit with cheap shopping. You can have yummy dumplings from street vendors anywhere and lastly there are numerous temples, historical sites and Mao statues to visit.

But best of all is the middle of the city which is dominated by parklands that are full of activity. The hub of these parks are the tea houses around the lake.

Chengdu is famous for its tea and tea houses. There are dozens of different varieties of tea to try. Surrounded by tables and tables of pipe-smoking old men playing checkers, groups of teenagers engaged in deep conversation, tables of families clearly having a ‘get together’; you  get a strong sense of tradition. Everyone is drinking tea, eating mandarins and nuts, playing cards and checkers. To sit there and be a part of this – it is magical. We sat by the lake watching, smoking cigarettes, drinking tea and playing backgammon for hours… thinking of something appropriately profound to say.

p.s- Also the city to go  and gawk at big cuddly black and white things.

2. Vientiane, Laos

Vientiane is a place that I have been fortunate enough to visit several times. This is a wonderful city to explore, discovering it piece by piece. Though it’s the capital city of Laos it’s not really a city as such, more like a big country town, dust and all. The centre of town is defined by beautiful French colonial buildings, wide boulevards and iron street lamps that contrast with the chaotic traffic, noisy markets and the smell of burning rubbish that is unmistakably Southeast Asian. Everywhere there are children, dogs, bikes, tuk tuks, street vendors (always inevitably selling a meat on sticks: rat, bat, sparrow…) All this set against the dramatic landscape and Mekong river.

The best way to get around town is by bicycles – not new flashy bikes but the old school type with big handlebars, big seats, big wheels. I used to hire a pushie each time I visited Vientiane to get around town. One time we were here we rode our push bikes to the deserted Russian circus- a strange and eerie place….

One of the things that you must do is visit the herbal sauna that is in a temple in the outskirts of town. In a big old veranda high in the tree tops you get massages, herbal sauna and tea. This is a place of absolute calm – It is here I got the best massage I had while in Asia (and that’s saying something) – all for about 6 dollars.

The best memories from Vientiane are just of sitting by the Mekong riverfront at one of the twenty-odd riverside restaurants, watching the river fisherman and other activity as the sky turns pink from the setting sun, drinking a beer or a Lao Lao Boom (an evil whiskey, honey and lemon concoction)….and eventually much much later in the night listening to drunk travel buddies singing their improvised reggae track  “Lao Lao Boom King.”

I could have listed any of the towns in Laos in my three plus one…in the end I decided to go with Vientiane because it is the gateway into Laos, a truly amazing country that rewards you at every turn, from Luang Prabang in the north to Pakse and  Don Dett in the south. It does not really matter which city you decided to visit; they all have the common theme – relax… find a rooftop… and for god’s sake have a Beer Lao and watch the sun go down.

3. Koh Chang, Thailand

My third choice is Koh Chang (sorry, Mae Sarieng ), an island in the south east of Thailand, near the Cambodian border. Koh Chang is made up of little fishing villages, back packer oases, rainforests, pristine beaches and very touristy resorts. The majority of tourists stay at the top end of the island in the first few beaches. And if you really really enjoy expensive accommodation, crap food and whingeing middle age German men in speedos, then you should stay here too. You’ll love it. If you are after something else entirely, then this is what you do. Stay on the songthaew. When you first arrive on Koh Chang ferry terminal you will be greeted by songthaews (Thai open trucks that are like buses) and you will travel in these over the mountains to the main part of the island. You will stop at every beachside town. Do not get off the songthaew. Not even when you are greeted with “cheap cheap cheap”. Do not get off that songthaew until you are at least have way around the island…eventually you will come to Lonely Beach, and this is your reward. As the name suggests it is a beautifully unpopulated, clear water, white sand beach. Paradise, with bungalows right on the beach for five dollars a night. We came here several times, each time staying for days, lounging around on the big wooden deck. We did hire mopeds one day and drive to neighbouring villages to explore. We did venture to the middle of the island, full of tropical rainforests and fresh water waterfalls.  We did snorkel. We did walk over to the neighbouring hippy food joint for lunch.…but mostly we just lounged round under the palm trees chatting with other travellers, thinking about the grandness of life.

I’m pretty sure that in Thai, ‘Koh Chang’ means “sleep, eat, drink, swim and participate in nighttime shenanigans”. If it doesn’t it should.

DISCLAIMER: Yes Lonely Beach has the occasional full moon party – fun yet perplexing… Where do all those sweaty rave bunny British backpackers go during the day?

The +1: Havana, Cuba

The one place I cannot wait to go…

Apart from really liking rice and beans, I look forward to spending time in Havana, Cuba for many reasons. For the salsa, for the rum, for the lovely and electric people that I am told I will meet, for the colourful architecture, for the 1950’s time warp effect and to swim at pristine white sand beaches, to listen to the music of the Buena Vista Social club.

Mostly I would very much like to sit on a beach looking out at the Caribbean Sea with cigar and mojito in hand; pretending I am Ernest Hemingway looking for pirates.

Hasta pronto la Habana!

Today, as part of ‘Meet the Kapowers’ week, it’s Lachlan.

Well, the photos from New Guinea have disappeared into the netherworld and the Filipino photo is actually a photo of a photo – but let’s do this thing.

1. Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea

Good old PNG. The dirt, the grime, the hundreds of men walking about with machetes hanging limply by their sides. The children screaming out directions to their teammates in pickup games of rugby league. The evangelists standing atop overturned milk crates with microphone in hand, their barked sermons distorted into grunts and squeals by the cheap amp at their feet. The smell of burning garbage everywhere, hanging over the city in dusty clouds. That immense blue harbour, with dark blotches marking the ships that sank to the bottom.

Port Moresby was my first true introduction to travel, and perhaps that clouds my judgment. We came to do the Kokoda Track, a miserable montage of mud and sweat for ten days and ninety-six kilometres, something I probably wouldn’t do again.

But Papua New Guinea itself was a place that threw open everything I thought I knew about the world. The villages were so isolated, so dusty and dry and unforgivably hot, with no access except by plane – or by foot. But the people – everything they did they did with energy and drive and smiles. They would hike some ninety kilometres to Port Moresby just to get crates of Coke that they would then hike back into the jungle, serving them to desperate trekkers with home-made donuts (of all things).

Look, I spent only a couple of days in Port Moresby, and in that time, cowered by all the horror stories, we spent most nights inside. Walking in the choking, garbage-strewn streets during the day, though – incredible. It’s not a pretty city, or a safe city, or even one with much to do. But in its intoxicating rawness I have never found its equal  - not in Bangkok, not Saigon, not even Phnom Penh or Manila. Papua New Guinea is one of the few frontiers left in the world, and Port Moresby is its eccentric, bloated, discoloured, arrhythmic heart.

2. Don Dett, Laos

During all of the year-long trip around Asia, we found ourselves in incredible places, but no matter the party credentials of an island like Ko Chang in Thailand or the sheer awe inspired by a stunning piece of real estate like Tiger Leaping Gorge in China, there was never any doubt about one thing: it’s nothing compared with Laos.

Laos was paradise. A paradise of friendly, smiling faces, a paradise of good food and constantly warm weather, a paradise of wilderness and empty spaces, a place where you could go days without seeing concrete or television or any of the ugly side-dishes to economic progress. And it reached its natural peak on Don Dett, one of many islands in the Mekong, where life was so laidback that we met an ageing British hippy whose life had been solely devoted to constructing a device, out of rope and bamboo, whereby a person could lie in the Mekong peacefully, without being dragged away by the current, and have a thickly-rolled joint handed down to them from the overlooking balcony. We rented a bungalow for less than a dollar a night, and lay in our hammocks watching the village boys rowing up and down the river endlessly. And that was it. And it was as close to perfection as I’ve ever come, or would ever care to come again.

3. Dumangas, Philippines

Dumangas is an utterly ordinary village outside an even more ordinary town, Iloilo City, on the island of Panay. The buildings there are made of concrete, the basketball courts out of dirt. During the evenings people get together and drink and play cards and gossip about the Deputy Mayor (who has a thing for breast milk, apparently). During the day they work in the rice fields, if they have a job, piling it up on the road to dry in the sun. They eat fish-head soup, it seems, two out of every three meals.

I came to Dumangas to do some work as a school teacher. I wasn’t trained, so it wasn’t paid, but I got to stay with a woman named Eden in the village and get a couple of meals a day and occasionally work on some construction projects around town. Which, I know, sounds like the least fun holiday in the world.

Every morning I would get up before dawn, woken by the incessant rooster crows and dogfights proceeding outside. I would walk up the road and wait for the jeepney – a stretched US army jeep, basically – and hold onto the back, standing on the rear bumper with the wind whipping through my hair. And then I’d knock on the metal roof when it came to my stop, a bland crossroads in the middle of some fields. And I’d walk along, waiting for a tricycle driver to come and pick me up for the last couple of kilometres to the school. I’d teach some ridiculous lesson from an out of date US textbook (most of them were about laser technology, which, like, okay), and everyone would leave at 11am – ostensibly for their three-hour lunch break / siesta, but they rarely came back.

Then I’d head back to town, and lie on my bed with the fan in my face and the shirt sticking to my back. I’d force down some fish head soup. Some of the men would ask me if I wanted to come and shoot some of the stray dogs, and I’d decline. Some other men would ask me if I wanted to come see a cockfight in the city, and again I’d decline (though I regret that, a little, now). And then some other men would come over, and open up a bottle of rum, and then the women would come in, and the children, and we would drink and talk and play cards and gossip about the Deputy Mayor. 

God I’d keep going but I’m making myself miss it too bad.

The +1: Nicaragua / West Africa

I’m lucky enough to be traveling here on our upcoming trip, and I can’t wait. I can’t say what it is about Nicaragua, what I’ve heard about it that separates it from, say, Honduras or Guatemala or Panama. But I see those images of canefields and volcanoes and lakes and jungle, and hear those names – Granada, Leon, Bluefields, – and something happens. I have a moment. A country of immense jungle, with English on one side and Spanish on the other, the Pacific and the Caribbean… 

Yes, I have a thing for steamy tropical backwaters. It’s a problem.

After this trip, West Africa is the next place I’d be dreaming to end up. I was actually trying to get to Ghana when I ended up in the Philippines (I couldn’t afford the airfare), so it’s been a long-held dream of mine, and with Sierra Leone and Liberia improving (or so it seems) I think it would be an incredible adventure to have.

Today, as part of ‘Meet the Kapowers’ week, it’s Danielle.

1. Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic

Cesky Krumlov was one of the biggest surprises on our trip to Europe in 2008. Phil and I were doing our first Euro-trip and when I went to Cesky Krumlov, we were about 12 cities into our 16 stop journey and on the home stretch. Cesky Krumlov is a tiny, old city which is almost half way between Prague and Vienna. Along the way, we had heard great things about it from other backpackers, but had no idea what to expect and were pretty much just along for the ride!

We arrived in our room in the hostel and it was by far the best hostel we stayed in across Europe. It was at the top of a huge timber cottage and our beds were butted up against the pitched ceilings. We shared with about 10 other people, but the nights here were the best few nights sleeps we had had after a long time travelling! This hostel is an old 14^th Century Hospital (and many other things in its time including a psychiatric hospital… what those walls had seen!) with ladder-like staircases and an open loft bedroom above our beds. It was just inside the town walls and had great views of the city and the river. This hostel represented everything that the whole town was about. Lovely, cosy and full of history.

The town is a small, beautiful, medieval city with a castle in the central district – complete with a bear moat! Yes! I said bears. Real life and everything. I may have thought about pushing Phil down the slope… The castle is surrounded by a winding, ice cold river that the village floats above. The river runs in and throughout the cobblestone walkways and footbridges, drawing your eyes to the forest surrounds – reminding you that you’re surrounded by leafy trees, birds, blue sky and everything good about Autumn.

Cesky Krumlov itself during the day is a quiet, fairly family / tourist orientated place, with cafes and shops and great food, but at night it changes – oh how it changes! All of these little cafes and restaurants turn in to packed cocktail bars with happy hours on all night… and us youngies come out of the dark shadows for the night games!

Phil and I had some great times in our short stay here: a sneaky climb up the bell tower (you were meant to pay but we played dumb); a walk down into the depths of the dungeon of the castle that they have turned into an art gallery; we discovered the most amazing sugary cinnamon bread desert things; and had the best Svickova ever (you need to try it! – it’s the traditonal wedding dish of the Czech Republic) Good sleep! Good food! Fun adventures! And bears! What more could you want for just being along for the ride. 

2. San Sebastian, Spain

San Sebastian is a place I imagine a lot of people have gone to… and those of you who have been there know exactly how much fun it is! We spent a lot of time in Italy, Spain and France eating, but I have to say, most of my eating on the trip was done here in this tiny sea side Spanish city. Sitting down to eat is unheard of - all you do is stand, drink and eat tapas, all day long. If you want a break, you can go and whale it up on the beach, but then you crave the amazing food and go back for more. Those of you who know me know I’m not all that keen on food. To me eating is one of the things that needs to be done, it’s not a passion of mine, but if I lived in San Sebastian it would be a completely different story! Ok I may be going a little overboard here, but my mouth is watering just thinking about it – when you go you won’t be disappointed!

There is more to do though other than eat, and that’s drink. In Spain there is no such thing as a standard drink – if you don’t tell them to stop pouring, they may never stop! Its more like “Would you like some tonic with your gin?”, than the other way around. This is great for a while but can get very dangerous after 5 hours of it! We stumbled across a night club right on the beach one night with a group of people… from what I can remember, it was a great night.

San Sebastian is a little beach town with the old and new town like most European cities. It is really relaxed and there are tonnes of young people around which never results in a dull night. Even all the locals look under 40 – must be the seaside air. We were walking along the beach one day and there was this super cool couple walking a pot belly pig on a lead! Awesome!

This place was great fun, even though we got a hail storm when we arrived and it was pretty cold, it is definitely a place I want to go back to.   

3. Wisemans Ferry + Hawkesbury River, Australia

Wisemans Ferry, odd choice I know, but this is one of the places I have visited most in my life, and has probably been the most formative. My parents started going to Carinya Ski Ranch before I was born. It was a caravan park right on the Hawkesbury River in Wisemans Ferry. There were 50 or so sites in this ski park that were mostly permanently leased so every holidays and every weekend or two, all of the families with a place would go to the river. We had an awesome caravan complete with annex and bunk beds galore. In our younger years my sister and I would take turns of falling off the top bunk and I think I was the only one to cracked my head on the sink below, but can’t be sure, it was a frequent occurrence!

Every time it rained, without fail, all the kids would get out of the river, have a shower, put on the fresh trackies and shoes and socks and fang around the dirt roads on our pushies. This would result with a thick spray of mud up our backs which would then in turn infuriate our mums and there would be mothers yelling and chasing their kids all over the park! Good times.

Obviously the reason this was the coolest place on earth when I was a kid was because it was a ski park! We all had boats and would go skiing or aqua-boarding or on the big banana or donuts daily, several times a day and some days we would be out from sun up to sun down. It was a very standard routine, the dads would all get up really early and go out for a barefoot when the water was still like glass, then us kids would wake up and pester our dads to take us out, which they would do. Then we would get back to shore to go fishing or go to the kiosk to get iceblocks or mixed lollies or go for a fang on the bikes, then probably go out for an afternoon ride on the big banana then come back for dinner and if it was a nice day the dads would go out for an afternoon ski. Now you might be thinking what were our mums doing all day (other than getting the mud out of our tracksuits from the night before) – well, they were usually sitting on a beach chair IN the river with a champagne or wine, soaking up the sun, staying cool and chatting the day away. Looking back on it, we used to ask mum to come out on the boat every day and she would usually just say she’ll watch from the shore and now I COMPLETELY understand why! They had the best idea all along!!! Very clever!

Every year we would have the Easter hat parade and Easter egg hunt. We would have New Year’s Eve parties, which is where I learnt to love and master “Nut Bush City Limits”, but would never manage to stay awake until midnight. I think I made it until midnight one year, but then had to be carried home at 1 minute past because I had passed out from exhaustion (I loved and still love sleep!). We had a navy ship come through one year while I was out on the aqua-board. Not only did the ship nearly not fit through the river but it made what felt like 5 story waves behind it, which I had to ride. I was terrified to go out for months after this and mum had to bribe me with earrings to get me to go back out, I am clearly easily persuaded!

I could go on for pages and pages about the river and the fun we had there. It is also clear to see where my love of river water and river mud came from (New Years 2009/2010 confirmed this)! Just be careful, if you are ever in a muddy river with me, be prepared to be covered in it! Goes to show – travelling is just as much about the experiences and memories as well as the places.

The +1: Lands of the Incas

After finally watching The Motorcycle Diaries I now have an answer to the questions I get asked a lot, “What place are you most looking forward to going to?” Well I kind of have an answer as it’s not really one place I am most looking forward to, but rather one region – the Inca Empire. I know it could be a bit of a cop out that I didn’t narrow it down to one place for my +1, but I think it’s quite clever of me! Anyway back to the point, why is this the place I have chosen as the one I am most looking forward to. There is something about the mountains and the people of these countries that that has visually stuck with me since I was young.

My parents went travelling in their 20’s and we had a hallway full of photos from their trips around the world. I would stand there and stare at them all the time and I remember there being this one of my dad standing in front of this gigantic snow capped mountain. I always knew I wanted to be surrounded by those mountains.

Then, thanks to my wonderful grandparents (who I secretly believe were feeding the travel bug inside me from a young age), we would receive a National Geographic magazine in the mail box every month (still to this day)! I would run home from school and be the first home just so I could look at al the pictures first! I remember seeing so many photos from South and Central America, and would stare at all the ones from Chile and Colombia and Argentina and Peru and just think they looked amazing with the most kind looking people, unless they had guns, then they didn’t look so kind…

Also having friends who have done Machu Picchu telling you it was the best thing they have ever done, it just makes me want to see it first hand. Although – we did do a bush walk a few weekends ago and thought we were going to die, so maybe we’ll need to do a bit of training before we tackle this one!

And finally, my most recent want for this region has to be the Bolivia special of Top Gear. I have to say I love those guys and it could be the best show on TV. Anyway, in this special, they drive down Death Road. Not only it is hilarious when Richard drives in to a ditch and has to be pulled out while all the locals are laughing at him, or terrifying when Jeremy nearly goes over the edge when he is pushed frighteningly close by a truck, but it also looked so beautiful, this giant cliff on one side, then a huge ravine on the other, one wrong move and you’re gone. So after I heard you could do bike tours down Death Road… HECK YEAH, COUNT ME IN!!

Today, as part of ‘Meet the Kapowers’ week, it’s Adam.

Ahhh this is a difficult assignment to be given. 3 of my favourite travel destinations? I’ve had the good fortune of visiting a few places around the world in the past 10 years. So many of my memories of these places are somewhat faded but luckily I have quite a large photo library to delve back into. Let’s see what I can come up with.

1. “Railay Beach”, Krabbi Province, Thailand

Probably one of the first places that comes to mind is a fantasy world buried down in the south of Thailand in Krabbi province. This little hideaway is Railay beach.

I used to work in Bangkok for a small post production company and for my first few months in Thailand I had hardly managed to get away. We had a fairly big project on at one point and was doing some pretty long days/weeks and by the end of it I was pretty much dead and needed a bit of a break.

My boss at the time recommended I head south and check out Railay. He said something like “once you get off that long boat from Ao Nang, turn around and look back at the sea. You’ll have a “moment” “.

He was right. That first view back from Railay is killer. I arrived just at the end of a storm and the sun was breaking through the clouds. The limestone peninsulas hugged the beach and everyone was just chilling out taking it all in. I can’t say much more than that except I spent 3 or 4 days just hanging out, eating some tasty food, and talking to other folks who were all blown away by Railay’s incredible beauty.

If anyone heads to Thailand, skip Phuket and the usual over touristed haunts, and head straight to Railay. Or Koh Lanta. Or one of the other thousand awesome places down in Krabbi. Phuket is poo.

2. “Mt Bromo”, Java, Indonesia

Last year I had the good fortune to meet up with one of my best mates Liam in Singapore. He was there to see a NIN concert and then go for a bit of an explore. So we booked some cheap flight to Java Indonesia and went hunting for volcanoes.

Java is a beautiful place. People are incredibly friendly and I got the impression that it is no where near as visited as places like Bali.
We crept our way west to east through Java and made it Probolinggo. After no time we were in a little truck and heading up the mountains to Mt Bromo.

This makes it into my 3 + 1 because once again it was just a mind blowing view that was almost out of this world. Also walking inside a once mega volcano is damn cool.

3. Jaramana & Al Hasaka, Syria

Last year, whilst enjoying a beer in a hostel in Aleppo, I became instant mates with a cool dude from San Fran. Anobel was in Syria to photo document the Assyrian refugee situation in Jaramana, Damascus. As well as that he was heading out east to a place called Al Hasakah to partake in the Assyrian New Year festivities.

From memory I convinced Anobel to use his kickass Canon 5D mkII camera for more good and shoot some video on it. So I found myself a week later down in Damascus in Jaramana with our cameras and macs interviewing Assyrian refugees from Iraq. Being in a place like Jaramana was a first for me and something that has affected me greatly. The stories we heard were horrific and some of the photos we were shown were even more so.

The experience out in Al Hasakah 50km from the Iraq border was very interesting. We were tailed for 4 days by an “official” with a mounted machine gun on the back of his truck. Apart  from that we had a great time visiting some Assyrian villages and meeting some incredibly friendly people. The new year’s party was a lot of fun and I have never seen such a long line of people holding hands and dancing!

The +1: Papua New Guinea / Pakistan

Oh man this is a hard one. I think I’d like to get to Papua New Guinea one day. Probably because it is a place so close to Australia that I know absolutely nothing about and it sounds quite untouched. I am probably quite wrong about that though.

Hmmm, maybe Pakistan. Every traveller I have who has been to Pakistan has said that the people are the most hospitable they have ever met. And some of those travelers had been to Iran which I think had the most hospitable bunch of folks I’ve met.

23 DAYS TO GO

I’VE STARTED: catching myself mumbling and chanting under my breath, when I’m not thinking about it, driving or walking down the street: “Not long, not long, not long, twenty, twenty-three, twenty, then nineteen eighteenseventeensixteen, three four five, not long notlong…”, not even realizing I’m doing it until people are staring. 

Everything’s starting to fall into place. But money! Oh, money. Flying straight out the door right when we need to hold onto it. Our clothes, perfectly fine two weeks ago, are suddenly falling apart and need replacing. Our packs, perfectly okay before, are ripped and mouldy. And then there’s the doctors…

Seven hundred dollars each on vaccinations. Seven hundred! Adam and I strolled into the medical centre down on Broadway, cocky as can be. We’d agreed – only the essentials. Yellow fever, natch. Maybe one of the Heps. At worst, a Tetanus booster. $200 should cover it.

The doctor played it cool at first.

“Ever been to South America, doctor?” Adam asked, making conversation.

“Nah, man!,” grinned the doctor, “Always wanted to, though. Always giving people the shots, never getting them myself.”

We laughed. We shared a moment. We bonded. And then he turned us around, threw us over a barrel and had his merry way with us.

“Have you guys thought about rabies?”

“No,” we answered confidently.

“You should think about rabies. You’ll need to get three shots. They’ll be $360. And then you’ll need to decide which malaria medication you want to buy from me. Malaria meds work out at about $4 a tablet. You’ll need to take them every day, as well as for a month afterward. Let me print you some information.”

At which point he printed us off the disease info sheets, a veritable catalogue of ways to die in South America. Adam remained cool, calm, collected. I felt the first few beads of sweat appear on my brow. I’ve always been a hypochondriac. Every cold is pneumonia, every fever is meningitis, every cut is septicemic. Rabies and malaria are not words I want to hear.

I steadied myself, and charged onward.

“Mmm. We can’t really afford rabies,” I said, “and we probably won’t get it, right? And I don’t know – is it really worth getting the malaria tablets if we’re going to be over there so long?”

“Firstly,” he said, “If you get rabies, and you start to show symptoms, you can’t be treated. You will die. Secondly, if you get malaria, you will probably also die, or at least wish that you were dead for a very long time.”

We got the damn vaccinations. The nurse shuffled across the room in socks and Crocs and dealt them out, three in each arm, flu, polio, yellow fever, rabies, hep A, hep B, typhoid, cholera.

“Which is the most painful?” asked Adam.

“The bill,” she cackled.

I decided to give it one last try.

“Do you really think this rabies shot is necessary?” I asked.

“How long are you going for?” 

“Twelve to eighteen months,” I replied.

Her old cat eyes widened.

“Let me read you an email I just got from a guy in Peru,” she said, fiddling absently with her mouse for all of ten seconds before flinging it aside, “oh, god, it’s not working. But anyway, this email from this guy, he said that he’s just surrounded by rabid mongooses – wait, is it mongooses or mongeese? Anyway, he’s just surrounded by rabid mongeese all the time, and he said it’s lucky that he got his rabies shot, because otherwise he’d probably be dead.”

What a way to go. Ambushed in Peru by a pack of rabid mongooses.

These rabies shots had better be worth it. I will consider this trip an abject failure if I am bitten by any less than three rabid animals – and I want to pick the animals. Jaguar, ocelot and alpaca - in that order - or else I’m packing up and going home.

Wow, less than 4 weeks to go until half the Planet Kapow team are on the road traveling from town to town in search of the perfect farm.

I’ve finally signed up to WWOOF Mexico, paid the $30, and now just waiting to hear whether or not I am a reasonable enough person to become part of the WWOOF community.

http://www.wwoofmexico.org/
http://www.wwoofcostarica.org/

WWOOF: The Movie Trailer from Ashley Terry on Vimeo.

This is the amended trailer for the up-coming documentary, “WWOOF!”, currently in post-production.

31 DAYS TO GO

ONE MONTH on the clock now. Thirty-one cold winter days to tie up all the loose ends, to say our goodbyes and to attempt some sort of preparation that may prevent us becoming bloated malaria-riddled corpses somewhere in the jungles of Nicaragua in a few months’ time.

Adam’s final day at work lasted seventeen hours – clocking in at half past nine and out again at half past two the following morning. In an epic feat of endurance he then managed to walk himself to the station and catch the 4:00am train to the mountains, arriving at the house in which we were staying just as the first glow of morning was lighting the valley.

A sublime way to spend a weekend, away together with a roaring fire and a kitchen full of beer and wine and prescription painkillers. We played Twister drunkenly on the lounge room floor – poor Marie getting her head stuck between four increasingly sweaty male buttocks – and greedily wolfed down Erin’s incredible slow-cooked leg of lamb and bougatsa. We complained our way through a gruelling trek over ridges and under cliff faces – Davina marching stoically up and down the muddy track with the notable handicap of wearing ugg boots and ending the walk with a slip-induced rip in her trousers – and woke to kangaroos in the backyard, eyeing us suspiciously as they grazed. We watched Hugh dart through the bush in his first mountain bike race in fifteen years and watched Danielle and Phil, wide-eyed, giggling and running through the Leura candy store, emerging with bags full of cavities-to-be.

All of which confirms a sneaking suspicion I’ve had for a few weeks now, namely that our friends are more than likely the greatest people that exist anywhere in the world, and that we’d have to be utter morons to be leaving like this, right now.

And then I go back to work. And then I remember.

With Adam’s working life now on indefinite hiatus, we can put some serious effort into laying the groundwork on this trip, coming at us faster than we could have imagined, too much to do and not enough time left, here, now. This week we will get our vaccinations, we will look at travel insurance, we will do all our Spanish lessons, we will get ourselves a farm to work on, we will exercise more and quit smoking and look after our families and try not to clog the drains with our beard hair, we will be better people, this week, I know it, I can feel it in my bones.

PART TWO: of our five day trip along the Szechuan-Tibet Highway, as we leave Litang for the comfort of a warm bath, only to be assaulted by a mob of hyperactive kids wielding large inflatable hammers in a shitty pizza joint in Kangding.

This was the section of the trip that I look back upon as the most difficult – the bus ride from Litang to Kangding was absolutely hellish – just dust, and pain, and pain from choking on dust – and after getting ourselves a little excited about the idea of coming down from the icy altitudes we’d been hovering at, Kangding turned out to be the coldest town of them all.

This is the last proper episode we were able to make before our camera was destroyed in a Dance! Dance! Revolution!-related accident, and subsequent episodes devolve into a bit of a grainy mess. But more on that next week.

From what I wrote at the time (not in the best of moods):

THE HIGHWAY: continued to beckon to us in Litang, where I last left off. Litang was a stunning little town, but the altitude of 4,000m was just too much – doing up our shoelaces became an Olympic sport; walking down the street a marathon of endurance; sleeping in our beds a cacophony of noise as our hearts beat furiously to keep up with the demand for oxygen. We would have adjusted within a few days, but lacking the time we decided to push on to Kangding.

The ten hour ride thereafter was the worst we have experienced on this trip. It wasn’t just that it was dangerous in places (it was) or unspeakably dull in others (it was) but that we sat up the back under the air vent half a foot above our heads, which served the twin functions of giving us something to smash our heads against going over each bump in the road (and the road was pretty much one long bump) while simultaneously spewing clouds of choking dust over us constantly, so that our hair and clothes were thick and crunchy with the stuff after an hour or so. In the morning, with the road blanketed in ice and snow, the driver swerved around clifftops and left Erin staring fixatedly out the window with exactly the same expression on her face that you see on young children when Bambi’s mother gets shot. In the afternoon, with the roads dry and dusty and the landscape flat and featureless, the driver slowed it down so that we could feel every bump, inhale every dust particle (as well as those tasty tuberculosis particles floating around from the other passengers), and get the maximum amount of enjoyment from the whole thing.

But we made it. In Kangding, a fairly large city squeezed into a deep valley, we met up with a Portuguese-American for a couple of nights of cheap Chinese liquor to defend ourselves from the cold – and oh my, it was cold. Kangding lies at an altitude of 2600m, but it was far, far colder than anywhere we’d been, higher or lower. It was so icy that even wrapped up in all our layers it was only possible to spend about twenty minutes at a stretch outside.

Strangest thing about Kangding – remember this is a large, completely modern city – is that, walking around one day, it started to snow a tiny bit. This was pretty exciting, as although we’d driven through acres of packed snow, it had never snowed on us before. So we walked around feeling pretty Christmas-y, with tiny flakes falling on our faces, when we started to feel a stickiness under our feets. We looked across the street, where, on a bridge in the middle of the city, was a small herd of goats and yaks. People were picking the ones they wanted for dinner that night. They were being slaughtered and skinned, right there on the street.

We were walking in a flowing stream of goat and yak blood, quickly congealing and freezing under our shoes.

(apparently that was China’s way of saying, “Merry fucking Christmas, foreign devils!”)

The track underneath this clip is from Beijing’s punk legends (and Rancid sound-alikes) Brain Failure, with the title track off 2007′s Coming Down to Beijing.

38 DAYS TO GO

IT WAS: a blazenhot sunny day, sometime last September, and we were all down at Maroubra Beach. We’d all been out together that day, I’ve forgotten where, Hugh, Adam, Dan, Phil, the two Erins and I, probably at lawn bowls because that’s invariably where you’d find us last spring, because “that’s how we roll”, check it. We were trying to force summer too early, trying to push the cold months out of our memory before the icy breezes had even stopped blowing in. And so we headed to the beach, to Maroubra, where the long blue horizon and the frantic white scribbles of the surf peek at you while you’re still coming down the hill with the radio up, pretending the breeze blowing through the car windows is warmer than it is.

And yes it was a warm sunny day, but by the time we got there it was 3pm, in September, and a cold wind was starting up, whipping around and chasing everyone from the sand. We ignored it, stripped off, punished the world with my pasty torso, and Hugh grabbed his bodyboard and sprinted toward the crashing waves, Adam, Phil and I following. The water was ridiculous, of course, but we forced ourselves in.  Afterwards Hugh and I ran laps of the beach – well, one lap, at least, let’s not overstate things – in a Baywatch-style slow-motion lope, abdominals rippling, and then we sat and chatted and the sun shone and we made plans to meet at the pub afterwards, because frankly we know of no other way to end a good day than at the pub.

 I was thinking of this day last week on the drive home from work, with the windows rolled tightly and my warmest jacket on. I was thinking about what month we’d have our first day at the beach this year – mid-September? Early October? And that’s when it hit me like a brick to the head that I wouldn’t be here at all, that by the time the first warm days roll in Adam and I will be far away from everyone here. It was an ‘Oh’ moment, the first time so far that the ramifications of picking up and going away for more than a year have sunken in.

There is always a point where a trip like this ceases, in your mind, to be an endless parade of beaches and cocktails and motorbikes and impossibly photogenic waterfalls and becomes something more complex and measured - a choice that you’ve made that requires missing out on something that may be just as rewarding. Long-submerged questions like “How are we going to do this?” and, even worse, “Why are we doing this?” start to rise out of the dreck of your mind and you can run yourself in ever-increasing circles trying to give them an answer. There is no answer; we go because we must.

Adam’s camera arrived in the mail this week, provoking squeals of excitement – mainly from Erin, who has found herself in possession of Adam’s old camera. We eagerly await the results of the new Canon C-3PO, or whatever it’s called. With all of us suited up with stupidly good cameras there are now no excuses – any bad photos on this trip will result in the swift execution of the offending photographer by ritual disembowelment.

On Friday Adam finishes his nine months of ‘gainful employment’ (read: horrific enslavement in a dimly-lit room with no access to food, water or internet porn). Thereafter we’ll be making a monumental push to become at least halfway adequate at Spanish (an effort which has come completely off the skids in recent weeks) and to get everything in order before our trip. We’ve got a rough shortlist of organic farms we want to work on throughout Mexico, though they’re all over the place – Yucatan, Chihuahua, Estado de Mexico, Quinana Roo – so we still have no real idea on where we go when we get off that plane in L.A. At the moment my idea is to head straight to San Ysidro, hire or even buy some motorbikes in Tijuana and cruise on down through Baja. But maybe we’ll head to Disneyland first. Or San Fran. Or Vegas. Trying to deny ourselves the expensive pleasures of the United States is going to be a tough prospect for two guys with all the attention span and self-control of an eight-year old boy with a bucket of fireworks.

This weekend is one of the last we’ll all spend together before Erin and I fly out to Townsville and Adam flies out to Rockhampton and Darwin, so we’ll be renting a house out in the mountains – someplace warm and cosy, with a hot tub – and having one last blowout with all our friends. With the reality of this trip slowly sinking in, I can think of nothing on earth I’d rather do this weekend, nothing at all.

TIBET LAY: before us, and though the distances were incredible, the travel times mindboggling, the costs far too high, we somehow thought we would get there. It had been the dream from the start – out of Thailand, through China, into Tibet, and then on through Nepal, India, Pakistan, Iran…

It couldn’t have happened, and here, rising endlessly through the mountains of Szechuan Province on the ridiculous excuse for a road that is the Szechuan-Tibet Highway, we finally gave in. It was here that the outcome of our trip was decided: we would travel on together as far as Chengdu, the capital of Szechuan, and then we would go our separate ways, Adam to Bulgaria, Turkey and the Middle East by way of Hong Kong, Erin and I to Burma or Malaysia or Vietnam, whichever we could afford with the small change we had left available to us.

But first there was this – an extraordinary trip through the small towns of the mountains, populated mostly by Tibetans, wheezing our way through the 16,000ft altitude, forgoing any kind of running water – showers, taps, flushing toilets – for days upon days, all of it frozen, the toilets in the guesthouses just full of unimaginable horrors the likes of which I hope nobody reading this will ever have to experience in their lifetimes.

From what I wrote at the time:

We set out two days ago on a road infamous as one of the most dangerous in the world, the Szechuan-Tibet highway, little more than a dirt track skirting narrow ridges with sheer drops of a kilometre or more on either side. For ten hours on the first day we tried to act manly and not whimper and cry “OhgodfuckI’mgonnadienopleasefuck” as the bus grunted its way through passes layered heavily with snow, surrounded by mammoth peaks in every direction.

I tried to pass the time solving problems (as in, “How many flimsy-looking pine trees clinging tenuously to the cliff face would it take to stop a 4-ton bus of screaming passengers from rolling down that cliff?”, or, “How many times can the bus roll down that hill before one of those giant pieces of heavy jagged metal that they’ve loaded into the aisle is certain to fly around and decapitate me?”); and eventually made it into the town of Xiangcheng with my dignity intact and my pants comfortingly dry.

Our dignity didn’t last long there, however. Xiangcheng is less a town than it is a bunch of people working a vast transport scam. Namely, the woman supposed to be selling bus tickets onto Litang refused (illegally) to sell them to foreigners (we had been told by an expat in Shangri-La that this would be the case; this woman also happens to run a far more expensive – and therefore profitable – taxi service to Litang). We then tried to wake up early in the frigid morning and bribe / blackmail / violently coerce the busdriver into letting us on the bus, but he was having none of it, and when Adam and I tried to kick some ass he quickly subdued us with the “Seven Dragon Fists Beating the Shit Out of Weak Crying White Men” technique. How were we to know that he knew Tai Chi? 

In any case, we eventually ate a big serving of humble pie (tasting a lot like rice porridge) and shelled out the extra money to share a minivan with a Tibetan man whose breath smelt like all your worst nightmares, a Chinese man who inexplicably whimpered on every third breath for the entire trip, and an irritating German who couldn’t tolerate the locals smoking in the van and so opened his window to a -16 degree breeze that cut through us like a knife covered in thick poison which is, itself, covered in rusty steel barbs which are then cursed with infinite misery.

At least the road was paved this time. It wound over endless arid plains, looking more like the scenery you’d expect to see in Iraq or Jordan than here. On each side frozen rivers wound by like white ribbons threading across the boulder-strewn landscape. It was a breathtaking 5-hour journey (in more ways than one), and left us here, wheezing and dizzy in Litang.

If Tibet gets any more Tibetan than this town, I’d be surprised. It’s quite rare here to see a Chinese face, or to hear Mandarin spoken (unfortunate, since we know absolutely nothing in the Tibetan language). Yaks wander the streets; the motorbikes are ridiculously pimped out with streamers and flowers and psychedelic mudflaps; walnuts and dried apricots have taken over as the market food item of choice, and we are continually mobbed either by friendly faces shouting “Hello! I love you!” or robed beggars (some with demonic face-masks) chanting something that sounds like the word “Ziggy” over and over again, like “ziggyziggyziggyziggy”. The beggars here are the most prominent and persistent since Battambang in Cambodia, which seems odd – outright poverty of the kind we saw so often in S.E. Asia has been thin on the ground elsewhere in the country.

The track behind this video is the very catchy ‘Zhong Nan Hai’ by Beijing’s Carsick Cars – kind of a Mandarin version of Sonic Youth’s ‘Teen Age Riot’ (ie, brilliant).

45 DAYS TO GO

ARRIBA, ARRIBA: Adam and I are now officially authorized to enter the United States of America. We’ve purchased ludicrously cheap tickets from Miami to Colombia and filled out our ESTA forms, and now we’re in like Flynn, on our way, and oh how sweet it is. We’d talked ourselves in circles about that ESTA form, endlessly, frantically; freaked out about what it might need from us – proof of residence? income? return ticket? – without ever actually looking at the damn thing. We wasted hours at work running through all the dreaded possibilities; when we met each other for a beer Adam and I would scurry to a corner to discuss in furtive voices our latest theories as to how and why we would be turned away, the seeming inevitability of having to start all over again. In the end it was about as simple as filling in that little arrival card you get on the plane when arriving in a country – in fact it was exactly that simple, because that’s precisely what it was, except computerized. Goddammit. People like us should probably be sterilized for the good of the gene pool.

Adam continues his horrific enslavement at the hands of his merciless employers, working seven days a week now, fifteen and sixteen hours at a stretch – but that blessed end is in sight now, the Friday after next. He has found time, though, to toss his camera and pick up a new one, which he does with the same regularity a normal person changes underpants. He is now the proud owner of a Canon 550D, and if I had any clue what that meant, I’d tell you more. It certainly sounds impressive, and if Adam thinks it’s going to improve the quality of his already incredible photography (check it out here), then I’m guessing it’s one helluva good camera. It will probably be a prized item for whichever lucky El Salvadorean highway bandit steals it from us while we weep in a terrified manner.

Meanwhile, it’s now three days away from the middle of winter here, and Erin’s family decided to mark the occasion with a Christmas in July weekend at a house in Bundanoon, in the southern highlands south of Sydney. If we had any lingering pastoral fantasies of life in the countryside, here they were sated and then some. We spent the three days playing cards and boardgames by a roaring fire, wolfing down cheese platters that appeared seemingly from nowhere and disappeared into the ether just as rapidly, watching the sun peek over the pine trees wreathed in frost from our bedroom in the late morning, touring wineries and buying more than perhaps we should have, having long conversations over dinners of roast chicken and pork and soft, homegrown winter vegetables. It was pretty much exactly like a BBC period costume drama, except that we were slightly more drunk, far less articulate, and spent most of the day in our pyjamas.

It was also the last chance I’ll get to see most of Erin’s family, one of the warmest, most wonderful groups of people I’ve ever had the good fortune to fall in with, and whom I will miss. It was the kind of weekend that reinvigorates you, that gets your head back in the right space… At one point, in the nearby national park, we trekked a short but steep descent to find Erith Coal Mine, abandoned since 1915, two dark holes in a cliff face overlooking a waterfall with the classic train tracks disappearing into shafts that run 1.4km deep. Incredible.

And then, of all things, we came across a Thai Buddhist monastery set back off the main road, deep in the forest, a magnificent stone structure that could have come straight out of Ayutthaya, with an emptied swimming pool that had, for unknown reasons, been turned into a massive world map (complete with a toy figurine of Steve Irwin, Crocodile Hunter, standing watch vigilantly over Australia). 

Walking around that temple contentedly, Erin’s baby nephew in my arms, brought back a lot of old feelings from our time in Asia. The joy of traveling, of feeling at peace and unhurried. The exhilaration of discovering something you never expected to find, in a place you’d thought you had all figured out. Mostly, though, it just reminded me how quickly I get sick and tired of seeing temples, and how I must remember not to go to more than, oh, one while we’re away, or I might scream. 

New update next week.

52 DAYS TO GO

I’M SICK: of waiting, of counting down the hours, the days, of travelling in this endless holding pattern. It needs to happen, and it needs to happen soon.

It’s only because it’s winter, of course. Summer in Sydney: a neverending orgy of cheap red wine, of sunlight beating down on pavement, of walking around the house naked. Of getting drunk in parks, of endless balmy nights, of swimming in tranquil bays and muddy rivers. Of fake drugs and fireworks, of rollerskating in the kitchen and riding drunkenly through the park with plastic bags full of beer hanging from the handlebars. Of picking up in the kebab shop, of weekends away up the coast, of making out with pretty much all your friends. Of shit in the hallway, of shitting in your pants, of shit on the bedspread. Lots of poo-related incidents last summer, come to think of it. Of swimming in the surf, of warm breezes through open car windows, of walking to the cafe barefoot and hungover. Of parties ending on a balcony at sunrise with an empty wineglass in your hand, of the smell of storms, of sweaty sex with the fan whirring. Of feeling like you couldn’t remember the last time you felt sick, or had to wear a sweater. Of lying in the grass, all day, in the sunshine.

We’re all going to miss it. Few things can beat summer in Sydney, especially when surrounded by a group of people this incredible – so incredible that twenty-odd of these brilliant friends braved the cold with zero notice to celebrate Erin’s birthday last week, a sangria-soaked fiesta at the best Mexican joint in town, Baja Cantina in Glebe. It was the last birthday any of the four of us will be having in Sydney for a while, and it was a great place to celebrate.

On the travel prep front, Adam and I recently discovered some exceptionally cheap flights from Miami to Guatemala City – $150! – costing the same as a visa, so suddenly the Visa Waiver Program is back on the list of options. We’re going to contact a travel agent tomorrow to iron out the last few wrinkles of doubt that are bothering us, and then we should be all set and ready to go. 

I saw a physiotherapist for the first time last week, looking to get rid of the persistent limp that I’ve been a proud owner of since coming off the crutches in May. I was quickly diagnosed as having an “extremely weak right buttock” and now have a series of daily exercises, most of which involve some form of clenching. If it doesn’t fix the limp, it may at least prevent a horrible accident featuring a long-haul bus and a dodgy burrito. 

And that’s it, for now. There’s still a lot to organize. A hell of a lot, really. But Adam is being worked to the bone right now, twelve hour days, six days a week, and will be for another couple of weeks, and anyway there’s still time, plenty of it, counting down slowly, hour by hour, day by day.

59 DAYS TO GO

WELL, OKAY: With a little under two months to go, now, until Adam and I board that first flight across the Pacific to an almost certain death-by-shotgun, we’ve decided it’s time to start regular updates on what stage we’ve reached in this whole preparation process.

Okay. So. We don’t yet have vaccinations. We don’t have visas. We don’t have packs, haven’t done health checks, haven’t looked into insurance, and don’t have sufficient clean underwear for a boozy weekend, let alone a year abroad.

There’s a long way to go.

Adam got his new passport this week, which is a step toward getting our visas for the U.S. The visa situation is turning into a real pain in the arse, frankly – the US has set up a Visa Waiver Program which covers Australian passport holders but due to the vagaries of the system, we’d need to book flights to Guatemala – before getting to L.A. – in order to qualify for it. That’s an extra $400 or so each, even if we fly out from Mexico City. And we’d probably have to then pay to bus ourselves back into Mexico to meet the girls.

A normal visa costs $150 but it’s not certain that we’ll get it, since we need to provide evidence of jobs and houses in Australia, both of which we’ll be giving up to travel.

The irony is that these new additions to the U.S. visa system are actually very intelligent and make travel to the states far easier for 99% of people. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t set up for people traveling overland.

Our Spanish learning continues to roll steadily along, though the days of doing it as a group appear to be over. Conjugations of verbs put paid to any notion of “fun” that comes from learning a language and now that we’re at the point where a couple of bottles of red wine is more of a hindrance to our concentration than a help, the group spirit was bound to fall apart sooner or later.

Adam is within spitting distance of finishing up with his job; I’ve still got a depressingly long way to go yet and I can’t even imagine how Erin and Dan get themselves out of bed in the morning, but day by day we’re getting there. Sydney’s icy and frigid right now, and the only real joy apart from friends is the single leaf of my Spanish Phrase-a-Day Calendar that I get to tear back each morning with righteous fury -

25th June – Estoy contento porque hoy cobro.

26th June – Por que no vamos a la piscina?

28th June – Leo el periodico por la manana.

Come on come on come on come on come on…

This week we’ll put through our applications for visas and start to look at travel insurance. None of us bothered with travel insurance in Asia, and it didn’t come back to bite any of us, despite a very bad bout of Dengue fever for me and swine flu for Adam. Really, I think it’s an unnecessary expense and wouldn’t bother with it normally – plus I have a sneaking suspicion that getting insurance places a supernatural hex on you that attracts thieves, cougars and oncoming buses – but having broken my hip this year in a cycling accident, I don’t want to run the risk of anything happening that would require going back in for more surgery. So, insurance ahoy, I guess.

Eight weeks to go! Another update next Monday.

L.

IN THIS: section, we’ll be bringing you music, films, recipes, games and other bits and pieces we find during our travels.

This week we’re looking at Lao baguettes, the unofficial dish of Laos, a staple of every street corner in every town. Cambodia may consider the pork baguette to be an essential part of its cuisine but in Laos the baguette is a daily need, served quickly by grinning older ladies hunched over a tiny flame. Ah, the crunch of that first bite! And all for less than a dollar.

You won’t make it that cheap at home. But you can still get some of the magic. Although you can certainly get meat versions, here we’re sticking with the classic breakfast baguette – eggs ‘n’ cheese ‘n’ chilli.

You’ll need a good quality crusty baguette, two eggs, coriander sprigs (optional), dried onions (optional), tomatoes, cucumbers, hot chilli sauce (the hotter the better) and a wedge of Laughing Cow cheese.

If you absolutely, positively can’t find Laughing Cow cheese, than any cheese spread will do – but I strongly recommend you search it out as it’s the only cheese we saw used, and no other cheese feels quite as good squishing through your fingers.

And now it’s simple – start by slicing long thin ribbons of cucumber with a fruit peeler. Chop the tomato in half and slice thinly.

Pop the eggs into a frypan and start frying them – how runny or firm you like them is up to you, but remember with all the pressure of the sandwich around it a runny egg is likely to end up mostly dribbling down your chin and drying on your shirt. An oozing, buttery yolk is best, if you can achieve it.

Now slice through the baguette, open up your cheese wedge and smoosh it all over the exposed whiteness. This is the best part, so enjoy it.

Chuck the eggs in there, with the coriander sprigs (if using). Drape with chilli sauce. Toss the veggies in on top, and sprinkle a bit of dried onion on top (if using). Then pour yourself a black coffee and fill the cup a quarter of the way up with sweetened condensed milk and there you have it: the all-time greatest breakfast / pick-me-up / Lao whiskey hangover cure.

AND HERE: we are now, high in the mountains of central China, in the never-before-seen episode 15 of Ping Pong Ka-Pow.

Tiger Leaping Gorge had given us a taste of the change from southeast Asian jungle to the icy Chinese mountainscapes that were to become our home from here on in, but in Shangri-La we got hit by the downside – dizziness, nausea, breathlessness, and a gripping cold that penetrates the bone and causes deep physical pain, a place where

Tibetan prayer flags were strung from hillsides and temples littered the countryside; where yaks replaced the cows in the paddocks and feral pigs replaced the feral dogs on the street. Crested by a massive monastery filled with dancing monks, people swinging prayer wheels, and lurid hypercolour murals of the gods and spirits, Shangri-La marked a massive difference from the China we’d seen so far. And we had it all to ourselves; even the beautifully-preserved old town was a ghost town with the freezing weather. Unfortunately, we weren’t really in the mood to notice it: we were cold, we were tired, we were nauseous and breathless from the altitude. Basically: we were lame. So we stayed indoors, chewing on Tibetan bread (‘baba’) and tea eggs and rice porridge.

The music in this clip is Devendra Banhart’s freak-folk anthem, “Chinese Children”, from his epic 2005 release Cripple Crow, which I highly recommend you lay your hands on, after you’ve laid said hands on his earlier Rejoicing in the Hands, Oh Me Oh My, and Nino Rojo.

L.

AND SO: after traveling through the golden beaches of Thailand, the radiant fields of Laos and the alluring jungles of Cambodia, it is in China, where we least expect it, that we find the most beautiful and awe-inspiring place of all.

Tiger Leaping Gorge.

I have to imagine that we were lucky. In the warmer months I guess that there are tourists aplenty, that the teahouses fill up and the track buzzes with the clicks of cameras and iPhones, the squishes of Birkenstocks into mud, the endless myriad noises of Western accoutrements.

But for us, arriving completely by chance in the middle of winter, there was only the mountains, silent and incredible, and a track leading through them, and the occasional man leading his donkey down the path, laden with firewood. And a couple of Swiss tourists as well, okay, but they were the only ones and we were happy for the company, swigging foul (but cheap!) Chinese liquor by the bottle on the balcony of one of the teahouses.

There is no sharper image in my mind, eighteen months later, than of those mountains, stark and clear in the quickly cooling afternoon sun. We reminisce over the couple of days spent here more than we do about any of the places we passed through.

From what I wrote at the time:

So we pushed on north to Tiger Leaping Gorge, where, surrounded by snow-capped peaks of 20,000ft or more, we trekked for two days along the ridge above the gorge. It was spectacular; we were covered in dust and our feet ached from the long climb but reaching the peak of the ridge and staring out into a 16km long gorge framed by those mountains was indescribably beautiful. China gets more and more beautiful at every turn; usually there are enough annoying aspects to match the good things but not here: alone on the track apart from the occasional goat-herder or trader carrying his goods by pony (plus a couple of Swiss backpackers with whom we had a drunken, stumbling night of draining bottles of cheap Chinese liquor), we felt the kind of peace that we had assumed China was incapable of giving.

The music in the clip is a varied bunch – we’ve got the dance-pop of the Teenagers’ “No Love” (as remixed by Delorean), the beautiful, perverted folk of Palace Music’s “Mountain Choir” and the noise-pop classic “California Goths” by Wavves.

L.

TOURIST TRAPS: abound in most places of the world, and so long as you can get in and out quickly and cheaply they can often be guiltily enjoyable. Trouble is, though, that often you find yourself wandering into a town, oblivious to its reputation, and it’s only when you begin to settle in that something doesn’t seem right. Perhaps you think you glimpse a guided tour going round a corner a few blocks away. Perhaps there is an unusual abundance of cooking schools and tattoo artists. Perhaps you glance at a menu at the local restaurant and feel you wallet trying to get out of your pocket and run away of its own volition. Whatever the clue: it’s time to run.

Lijiang, the town in which we find ourselves at this juncture, in episode 13 of the Ping Pong Ka-Pow series, at first comes off as a vision of Crouching Tiger-era China, gushing streams forded by tiny arched stone bridges; cobblestone alleyways leading to ponds dotted with koi, cherry-blossom leaves drifting slowly, inexorably toward the water.

We were probably able to hang on to this vision longer than usual because it was the middle of winter and the place was largely devoid of people. Chinese tour groups still trotted obediently behind a tour guide safely armed with a flag, whistle and megaphone, but we were told by a few people that during the summer the tourist scrums swell into mobs of such intensity that several unlucky souls find themselves shoved into the canals through the sheer weight of the camera-toting hordes.

But as night fell and the grand cobblestone buildings mutated into pounding nightclubs filled with the rich and powerful and we found ourselves unable to afford dinner or drinks (nine Australian dollars for a light beer!), we realized the trap had been sprung. Eventually we allowed ourselves to splurge on one beer each, but the music was too loud for conversation, and the moment we finished the beers we were told in no uncertain terms to buy another or get out.

So we got out.

The music in this clip is, of course, David Bowie’s “China Girl”, from 1983′s Let’s Dance. Finding quality songs from China – sung in Mandarin – has proven to be a surprisingly difficult task, especially given how many quality songs we came across in Thailand and even Cambodia. We know they’re out there but as far as we can tell, they’re not on any websites in English. If you know a good source, please, let us in on the secret.

L.

MORE THAN: any other country I’ve visited, China is a perfect illustration of the virtues of hitting the roads, of seeing a people and a civilization live and in the flesh.

For a lot of people I know, people who came of age in the 80′s and 90′s, China has a lot of negative images associated with it. Without even going there, you think you can picture it exactly – and that picture looks almost exactly like Blade Runner. Overcrowded. Brimming with pollution. A population under control. A people obsessed with little but money and power. A place where the trees have been replaced by smokestacks and the rivers by wide concrete highways snaking across a bleak, endless cityscape of grey factories laid out neatly as far as the eye see.

Exaggerations, of course, but these are the basic ideas that flood through the mind’s eye and make people say, “Mmm, maybe we should stay in Thailand instead.”

This is an image formed by a consistent narrative from our media – China, the power-hungry giant. China, the last bastion of an increasingly compromised brand of communism. China, where information is restricted, where the truth is under lock and key. China, the teeming billions.

And like most media narratives, I don’t doubt that there are nuggets of truth in those images and ideas, particularly since they’re based more on Beijing and the eastern megalopolises (or so I assume), places we never traveled to. I certainly don’t mean my comments to come across as somehow defending China’s government and its actions. 

It’s just: there’s a hell of a lot more to it than that. It’s just: take a step back and get a good look at the view. It’s just: complicated.

Because China’s beautiful – a massive country of mountains and plains, of deserts and rainforests. Every slogan you might have heard describing Australia or the U.S. or Europe would fit just as snugly – perhaps even more aptly – upon China’s shoulders. The place is gorgeous, and the people! The people are loud and brash and vital and pushy and friendly and nosy and free – free! Free in a manner different to what we mean in the West when we call ourselves a ‘free country’, but no better or worse than that, and equally as valuable. The people there are free to take their lives into their own hands in a way our caring-but-sometimes-smothering nanny states rarely allow. We saw a lot of things done in China on a regular basis that would end in heavy fines or prison times back here. And yes, once again, I am dead certain that in other, more serious ways, the people of China have their freedoms curtailed, and I’m sure that when it happens, it happens in places that three bumbling tourists aren’t likely to witness it. But just to go and look and find the world far different to what you expected: this is a valuable thing.

This is the 12th episode of Ping Pong Ka-Pow. And China is a wonderful place to find ourselves in it.

From what I wrote at the time:

CHINA IS: everything you think it’s going to be. It’s loud, it’s dirty, it’s smelly, it’s smoggy. It’s crowded, it’s beautiful, it’s utterly frustrating. It’s: scratched kung-fu movies on sleeper buses, it’s: old communists sitting calmly with a cigarette watching the dream die, it’s: young women on tiny mobile phones in expensive boots and scarves. It’s: plump middle-aged couples playing mah-jong in the park, it’s: grim-faced men spitting on the street, it’s: families huddled around outdoor tables hosting a gargantuan banquet of every edible thing known to man. It’s: neon lights. It’s: traditional temples with endless whirrs and clicks of cameras. It’s: stunning mountains and streets lined with cherry blossom trees. 

What I didn’t expect, though: it’s all happening at once, one massive enthralling mashed-up stir-fry of cliches and surprises. 

At the Chinese border I expected trouble – a bag search, a bribe, a full-body inspection. Instead, the official quizzed us endlessly on what each part of the Australian coat of arms represented – not because he was suspicious of us but just because he was interested. We made some stuff up – “Um, I think that thing represents our greatest poet, Banjo Lawson…” – and then we were in China.

From the border town of Mohan on to Jinghong in an air-conditioned minibus cloudy with cigarette smoke (I have never seen a people as determined to smoke in every place they can possibly dream up as the Chinese – and that’s coming after “Of course you can smoke in the cinema” Cambodia. Adam reports that one can still light up on some Chinese planes.). We crossed the Mekong – the fourth country in which we have sat by that river – into Jinghong and wandered around town, taking in the smells of hard work and industry and then coughing it up later in black snot and phlegm. It’s certainly odd being around people who are constantly working after the “Maybe tomorrow” countries we’ve been living in for the last eight months. China seems absolutely full with things and people doing things. Erin and Adam, hyper with the excitement of a new country, buzzed about the streets exclaiming “Look at that!” “No, wait, look at that!” while I dragged along behind, tired and cranky and struggling to breathe in the smog.

From Jinghong we took a seventeen-hour sleeper bus – a delightful cornucopia of smells and sounds, let me tell you – to the old city of Dali, towards the northwest of the province. To give you some vague idea of the size of China: we have been travelling in modern buses, on modern highways: we have had more than twenty-two hours of straight travel: and we’re still only halfway through the lowermost province.

After a long period of travel you can feel like you’ve been living on a constant diet of spicy squid-flavoured potato chips and sleeping pills, so here in Dali we shall rest up for a few days. It is a beautifully-preserved old town, strung with restaurants churning out stunningly-good food and criss-crossed with canals and lines of cherry-blossom trees. It’s surrounded by mountains and is perched on a large lake – the air is crisp and cold and the spectre of winter has kept it empty of non-Chinese tourists. But it is freezing – we’ve bought some cheap thermals, and gloves, and a second layer of jackets, but I don’t know how well they’ll last us – and it’s only going to get colder from here.

Our Mandarin is coming along much more rapidly than I had supposed it would; after three days we seem to have most of the essentials covered – introductions, bargaining, ordering food, and locating toilets. Though the latter is something we try to avoid, since Chinese toilets are, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the worst toilets I have come across anywhere in the world. Papua New Guinean toilets were generally nothing more than a hole in the dirt, but at least most people seemed willing to aim for that hole. Going to the bathroom here is like running into a burning building to save a child: cover your face and get in and out as fast as humanly possible.

But in both its good and bad aspects China is absolutely captivating. A lot of people I know – including myself, up until a couple of months ago – have no real desire to travel to China. It seems crowded and dirty and pushy and polluted, and whatever seems beautiful about it one can find elsewhere – in Nepal, say, or Mongolia, or Vietnam. But that misses the crucial element that one only finds by coming here, which is that you simply cannot take your eyes off the entire dirty, noisy, perfect mess. This is a mammoth country, larger than you can imagine, and yet it’s entirely filled – things are constantly happening or on the verge of happening; there is always something to see or to do or to have done to you.

L.

AND NOW: we’re gone, up out of southeast Asia, rumbling through the last stretch of Laotian jungle, green and screetching, before our entry to China in the 11th episode of the Ping Pong Ka-Pow series.

In our last week in the country, suddenly conscious of our steadily dwindling resources, we raced through Luang Prabang and Luang Nam Tha, helped along by a stomach bug which meant that much of my view of Nam Tha was of the flimsy, rotting bathroom door behind which I crouched and dreamed of better days.

From what I wrote at the time:

Out from behind the looking glass, we caught a bus over zigzagging hills and cliff-edge villages for six hours north to Luang Prabang, the great temple city of Laos. We had decided to stay only a night or two; Luang Prabang is a beautifully-preserved city (“and it’s full of fucking hipsters,” as we were told by 19-year old Jarred), but there doesn’t seem much to do at first. Give it time though, and the city becomes vital and exciting; it is the top of the loop for most travellers on the Thailand-Laos-Vietnam-Cambodia circuit and thus functions as something of a gathering point – here we met up with people we’d met all over the place, most notably Canadian Ben and Christine from Chiang Mai, who dragged us along with a few more buddies to a sticky rice festival at a nearby Hmong village.

We drank and danced; we danced and drank. And then we were molested. Erin found herself cordoned off by a bunch of teenage Lao boys who rubbed suggestively against her hips as if it was a Year 5 school disco or something: one even tried to trap her with the old wrap-your-scarf-around-her-waist-so-she-can’t-get-away trick. Meanwhile, a group of teenage girls dancing with me were getting increasingly close, and one kept pinching and pulling at my shirt. I backed away a little, and all of a sudden she sort of launched her face at my crotch. Which was embarassing.

Our last few days in Laos passed in a rush – from beautiful Luang Prabang north to Luang Nam Tha, past innumerable villages of bamboo huts staring out across the valley. In Nam Tha we paused awhile to sit by the river and smile at the young children who approached cautiously with shouts of “Sabai-dee!” and then ran screaming when we turned and replied. A couple of nights in a Chinese-run guesthouse graced with large portraits of Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin while I overcame a stomach bug, then onwards. From the jungle we caught a rumbling bus over a Chinese-built road that had completely collapsed in some areas, leaving gaping holes that tumbled over nerve-wreckingly high clifftops.

We face an eleven-hour bus ride tomorrow (to cover a paltry 200km) over what will invariably be more scenery which is so beautiful it makes me want to cry but which I will never, ever, be able to adequately describe for someone who hasn’t been here. So be it. By the time I next write we will be inside the great red monster on our maps. Next week we will be in China.

This episode also marked the point at which we abandoned all hope of finding decent Laotian pop songs and went with a classic – the deliriously good “The Passenger” by Iggy Pop, from his 1977 opus Lust For Life (the thinking went that excellent music would go some way toward covering up the fact that all of us forgot we had to speak to the camera during the week covered by this episode – and I think it worked).

L.

HALFWAY THROUGH: this southeast Asian odyssey now, and we find ourselves on the other side of the looking glass in the 10th episode of Ping Pong Ka-Pow. Vang Vieng in Laos was utterly surreal – the most grotesque and beautiful place we had come across.

Nights out that ended with us singing to a broken air-conditioner; tubes down the river that ended with groups of nineteen-year olds wrestling in mud baths and catapulting themselves into the river; bike rides that ended with us lost in the wilderness on dirt roads, with bruises on our palms that would take weeks to disappear – everything was par for course in Vang Vieng.

From what I wrote at the time:

From Vientiane we caught a bus over meandering mountain ranges to Vang Vieng, the party capital of Laos and easily the most surreal and ridiculous place I have ever had the mixed fortune to visit. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves: first I have to say that Vang Vieng has perhaps the most stunningly beautiful natural setting of any town anywhere in the world. It lazes by a picture perfect river while jagged, monstrous limestone formations covered in thick green forest surround it on all sides. And, before the sun sets, there is a world’s worth of things to do there – bicycles rides to little villages, motorbike rides into the nearby mountains, white water rafting, kayaking, all kinds of caving, swimming, rockclimbing, and floating down the river in the inner tube of a tractor tyre.

After the sun sets, however:

Vang Vieng falls in prostrate worship to six gods. Their names are Ross, Rachel, Chandler, Monica, Phoebe and Joey. Friends is not just a TV show on the main street of Vang Vieng. It’s a way of life. Imagine, if you will, a row of bars stretching for a couple of hundred metres on either side of a main street. The bars are not large, but there are lots of them, competing for your business. Now imagine that every one of them – every single one – is playing Friends on several large screens. No games of pool, no live bands. Not even any goddamn Seinfeld or Simpsons. Every bar with a different episode of the same show, each night, all night. Welcome to Hell.

It doesn’t end there.

Vang Vieng is freezing this time of year, especially at night, but wander down a side street away from the Friends drag and what do we have? Ah, bars full of half-naked eighteen and nineteen year olds dancing drunkenly around campfires in their bikinis, falling over logs and threatening to sue the bar owners, yelling at each other about how ‘wicked’ the Man U v Hull match was (these wild, beautiful, loud, stupid children being almost inevitably British), and just generally being young and boorish and tour group-y. This side of Vang Vieng reaches its peak on the river, where hundreds each day pick up their inner tubes and begin to float down the river, taking in the peace and tranquility.

Wait, did I just say “peace and tranquility”? Oh. What I meant was “giant motherfucking rave parties on each side of the river with techno music from 1997 blaring into the valleys below, copious amounts of Lao whisky being drunk from plastic buckets, mud baths and waterslides, massive cranes from which these pretty young things fling themselves into the river, and hundreds of other teenagers, just as drunken and horny and undressed as themselves”.

And: it still doesn’t end there.

Find your way past the Friends brigade and past the teenagers revelling in their Spring Break Girls Gone Wild-athon, and one comes inevitably to The Island in the middle of the river, which every night becomes a giant ship adrift in a sea of cheap opium, cheap magic mushrooms, cheap methamphetamines, cheap marijuana, and expensive beer. Here the people huddle around campfires muttering things to themselves and vaguely asking each other, like, what’s the deal with, you know, stuff. We all tried out the mushroom shakes: I held a telepathic conversation with a tree for about an hour, Erin made friends with a skeleton who hid inside the wall and told her to burn things, and Adam composed a song on ukelele for a whale shark inside our room which was later revealed to be a broken air conditioner. Later, after an opium shake, I spent several hours with a stupid grin plastered to my face belting out “We Built This City (On Rock & Roll)” from my manically writhing hammock. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

SINGAPORE IS: to my mind, not one of the most interesting countries on earth. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that in mid-90′s cartoon reference terms, Singapore is the closest thing we have to a Castle Greyskull, a thoroughly dull lesson in how a country can be both a globally-respected economic powerhouse and simultaneously be one of the most subtle and successful dictatorships in the world. Plus it’s super expensive and Sentosa Island is the lamest theme park on the planet.

Which is all a roundabout way of saying that if I had to pick a place to end a 2,100km journey by bicycle, the City of a Thousand Defamation Suits probably wouldn’t be it.

Adam and his good mate Nick Ward thought otherwise:

Here we go!

So, what the hell are we doing?

Riding a bicycle from Bangkok via Malaysia to Singapore. Duh!

Well a few months back when I was traveling I had the good fortune to meet a bunch of crazy people. Crazy people doing crazy things. Well crazy to me at the time. People such as a French guy called Yann. I met Yann in Iran. Yann told me he rode from Singapore, via China and all the *stans, to get to Iran, and was continuing on home to France. At that point he’d covered 18,000 kms. Oh yeah, he did it on a $S300 mountain bike. 

Meeting people such as Yann has led me to wonder why I am not doing such cool things as these folks. So on my way back to Thailand I decided I was going to buy a bicycle and ride to Singapore. I figured if I could at least to something like this I would be guaranteed fame, fortune and all the beautiful ladies of the world! Well not really, but probably.  It turned out that Nicholas, & our good friend & resident bicycle guru Boat, were getting their bicycle on too, and were pretty interested in joining me to Singapore.

After some slight delays, such as having to work, here we go.

July 12th 2009 we set off from Bangkok en route to … Hua Hin i think – is that right Ward?

* I’m sitting here at my Dad’s place here in Hong Kong, preparing for the ride with a egg tart in one hand, and a vodka & soda in the other. You see I was just informed that Nicholas, the half farang half thai guy who is doing this ride with me, has just bought a brand new bicycle. And he is riding it. I am not doing anything at the moment and I know this will be to my detriment. Oh well.

This ridiculous undertaking ended up taking 27 days, passing through three countries and some beautiful countryside. At the end of the line both guys were left with thighs as thick as my torso and one hell of an appetite. An absolutely heroic effort by the boys, it was an incredible journey that has to be seen to be believed.

You can read more about the ride (jakkayarn, you may have guessed, is the Thai word for bicycle)- as well as check out some of the amazing photos taken along the way – here.

L.

IN THIS: section, we’ll be bringing you music, films, recipes, games and other bits and pieces we find during our travels.

This week, it’s makruk, the Thai version of chess. On the streets of Bangkok and pretty much every other town we visited, makruk was second only to beer bottle-top draughts in terms of popularity with tuk-tuk drivers and food vendors. It’s also a favourite game of Cambodians, who call it ok. The Burmese have their own (considerably more complicated) version, called sittuyin. Foreigners are rarely invited into games but working at the school in Bangkok I managed to bully my way into having a few games against the kids. I was soundly thrashed.

The interesting thing about makruk is that it’s far more true of the original game of chess that came out of India than the version most of us are currently familiar with.

This is the set up – fairly close to Western chess, except that the pawns are on the third rank, and the queen is placed to the right of the king.

And these are the pieces. Several of them look very similar to each other, which is fairly confusing at first (I blame this for the majority of my defeats. Stupid punk kids).

From left to right:

Rua (Rook) – moves exactly the same way as in Western chess.

Ma (Knight) – moves exactly the same way as in Western chess.

Khon (Bishop) – can move one space diagonally in any direction, or one space forward.

Met (Queen) – can move one space diagonally in any direction.

Khun (King) – moves exactly the same way as in Western chess.

Bia (Pawn, not pictured) – moves exactly the same as in Western chess, except that when a pawn reaches the 6th row, it is flipped over and becomes a biagai, or promoted pawn, and can then move as a queen, one space diagonally in any direction.

With the bishop and queen far more restricted than in Western chess, makruk is a slower game that doesn’t really allow for quick defeats (unless I’m playing). There is also an honour rule, which says that if there are no bia on the board (biagai don’t count) and you don’t think you can win, you can start counting your turns. Make it to 64, and the game is declared a draw.

For a more comprehensive overview see ancientchess.com or chessvariants.com. Ancientchess also has a nice-looking free rulebook available for download here.

L.

“I WAS: like, this is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen… I just woke up, and I was here.”

Stoned on weird Thai sleeping tablets, we arrive in Vientiane, Laos, in the 9th episode of Ping Pong Ka-Pow, having departed Thailand for the last time via a twelve-hour bus ride from Chiang Mai. Funny, looking back, these monumental voyages that would kill us now, twelve or fourteen hours aboard a rattling bus, crammed into a seat built for a person several feet shorter than Adam or myself.

Vientiane is one of our favourite cities in the world, and Laos far and away the most relaxed, beautiful and enjoyable country any of us has had the privilege of visiting. I don’t really want to say that, because I don’t want to contribute to its eventual ruin under the stampeding feet of thousands of tourists, but that process has, alas, already begun, and no countries outside of Afghanistan, Somalia and North Korea have found a way to halt it once it’s started.

Here’s what I had to say at the time:

AS CAPITAL: cities go, Vientiane is pretty hard to beat. It’s practically empty (less than a quarter of a million people), full of smiling happy faces, French gardens, good food, roundabouts that nobody here can seem to work out how to use, and the shimmering Mekong slithering around it in endless magnificence. We went out to the temple for herbal saunas and massages ($1!),  ate wonderful food, drank far too much Lao whiskey (mixed with lemon and honey, oh yeah) took bikes out to the decrepit circus gifted to Laos by the Russians during the 70′s and somehow ended up at a shooting range.

That place was a little scary; they had a delightful selection of live ammunition, mortar rounds and explosives from the Vietnam war and the van outside sported a massive windscreen sticker screaming “KILL THEM ALL!” (we, meanwhile, pulled up on bright pink bicycles with baskets on the front that we had hired from our guesthouse). So we shot off some rounds into a target (Adam wanted to shoot a Colt .45, but the lady at the counter took one look at our skinny white arms and decided that we were far too sissy for anything bigger than a 9mm) while the lady held our hands in the right position – this place was literally in the middle of the city and had no roof, so a little caution was necessary, I guess. We were given the target as a souvenir, and rode off on our pink bicycles as total gangsterz.

Laos is the guy at school that nobody ever says a bad word about; he never dates your ex-girlfriends, he always brings beer to parties, he thinks that your taste in music is excellent and he covers for you in front of your parents without even having to think about it. Laos even does your homework for you when you’re feeling sick. Basically, Laos is a total dreamboat.

L.

OH, THAILAND: our home for so long, was disappearing beneath our feet, beneath the hull of our longboat, beneath the bald tyres of our rattling bus. The 8th episode of the Ping Pong Ka-Pow journey would be our last together in Thailand; Adam would return many months later but for Erin and I, this was our last glimpse.

We made it count. My friend Kevin flew in from Singapore and we all spent a few beautiful days lazing on the river, high in the mountains of northern Thailand. Laos stood ahead of us, and behind her loomed China, the great vast unknown, and the icy road to Tibet (or so we thought at the time).

From what I wrote at the time:

IT’S TIME. After eight months – thirty-four weeks – we have left Thailand for the very last time. An end to the heat and humidity and crowds and smells of Bangkok; an end to the mountains and beaches and parties and soft breezes of everywhere else. A final end to circling and backtracking; we are aiming ourselves on a straight shot to Tibet, through Luang Prabang, Kunming, Shangri-La, Chengdu, Golmud, a dozen names both mythically familiar and wilfully obscure. We are on the great north road and only poverty or frozen-to-deathness will stop us.

Kevin flew in from Singapore to visit us for our last week; there are few better feelings than seeing an old friend after many months adrift. Together the four of us headed north to the river town of Tha Ton, where we had planned to commandeer a bamboo house-raft complete with a cook and a guide for three days. That turned out to be a little optimistic; we only had the money to jump in a long boat for the day as we floated down the majestic river through rocks and rapids, stopping at temples overgrown by jungle and hill-tribe villages surrounded by water buffalo bathing in the thick mud. Some ninety kilometres downriver we were dropped at a set of hot springs where we bathed in the heat under the incessant buzz of fluorescent pink dragonflies, ignorantly dropping their larvae into the pool where they quickly died and sank to the bottom.

We planned to stay with an Akha tribe in a nearby valley, and attempted to hitch a ride there with a friendly Japanese man who drove by. He drove us for several kilometres to the wrong village, whereupon it was revealed that he was actually a Christian missionary building a church for the heathens. Oh. Not a terribly popular vocation, in our group, and we quickly decided we wanted no more to do with him. Except: he was our only way out. So we spent a while chatting to the village girls (who spent a while trying in vain to get Adam to hold a chicken; Adam has a weird phobia about those kind of things) and watching with smug grins as a large crucifix brought to the village was thieved by a snotty three-year old and used to dig canals through the mud. And then we asked to be taken back.

We made it there in the end, to the Akha village in the valley, and spent a couple of truly amazing days bathing under ice-cold waterfalls, working up great sweats walking up and down the hills of the tea plantations, trading swear words and bad jokes with the tribespeople in a variety of languages, and just genuinely loving everything about Thailand. And then the comedown: we arrived in Chiang Rai, a blurred dullness of a city, all overcast skies and roaring traffic and glaring light. We had planned to spend a couple of nights there but after about three hours we were aching to leave; the next day we caught a bus back to Chiang Mai.

L.

AFTER OUR: long sojourn in Asia together, Erin and I returned to Australia homeless and penniless, soon tied to the ground with the numbing blandness of  jobs and searches for apartments.

Adam, meanwhile, continued to stride out into unknown waters, first travelling to Hong Kong, then Bulgaria, and then through Greece and Turkey to Iran, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt.

Along the way he made this – frankly incredible – video about his trip through Iran. He wrote the following:

In February 2009 I was fortunate to spend 3 weeks traveling in Iran (a.k.a Persia).

In those 3 weeks I got to explore Rasht, Tehran, Shiraz, Persepolis, Maybod, Yazd and along the way I met by some of the most friendly & welcoming people I have ever met.

Iran thank you very much for this incredible adventure!

The lovely music in this clip is from Homay (Saied Jafar-zadeh) – you can find more  music here.

L.

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STILL ON: the loop around northern Thailand, we finally reach the traveller’s mecca of Pai, in the 7th episode of the Ping Pong Ka-Pow series.

After hearing people all over Thailand rave about Pai, it didn’t quite live up to the hype, especially having come from the quiet perfection of Mae Hong Son and Mae Sariang. It is – or perhaps was - a pleasant town on the banks of a river, though the market was a crushing clusterfuck of Canadians and Australians keen to get woollen hats and everything was a wee bit expensive (and generally tacky).

 From my post at the time:

Pai is the kind of town you get in every country – the Byron Bay, the Vang Vieng, the Queenstown – a drawing point for travellers of all kinds, where you get great parties and food and nightlife in exchange for relentless Americans with bullhorn voices and all kinds of tacky, shitty merchandise being shoved at you from all angles (though the ‘Don’t Happy, Be Worry’ climate-change-awareness t-shirts were a highlight).

Unfortunately, our trip unintentionally co-incided with the cremation of HRH the Princess, who died a year ago and whose body has been on display to the public since. Now, since she was getting cremated, HRM the King decided to declare a dry weekend across the nation. No alcohol. Enforced sobriety. In the town where the nightlife was the only attraction. Balls.

We did what we could. Erin and I enrolled in a cooking school and spent the days whipping up gigantic bowls of green curry, pad thai, kao soi, laab tohu, panang curry and mango sticky rice – Erin with her trademark elegant artistry, me with my hand held with increasingly frustrated force by the lady teaching us in her back kitchen. Adam hired a bicycle and set out to get lost among the rice paddies, finding his way to another ex-communist village and a waterfall in the jungle.

We got by. And by our last night, cracks were appearing in Pai; alcohol was slipping through, to great rejoicing and gnashing of teeth. Wandering the streets late at night, we were adopted by Pom and her sister, who had started a campfire in the middle of a frontyard that didn’t belong to them in the middle of town and were busy drinking and cackling around it like wild children. Pom had emerged from a tragic past of dead husbands and divorce to become an awesome force of drunken destruction. She was a fantastic combination of the cool girl from Chasing Amy (her standard greeting was “Hey, fuck you, man”) and some sort of Russian transvestite (addressing everyone as “honey” or “dah-link”) and just sweated class as she stumbled about the campfire with a whiskey bottle in hand, complaining of how she couldn’t see the stars.

The night got out of hand. Adam went through a fence and fell five feet onto his back. We somehow ended up attached to a Thai rastafarian who couldn’t speak a word of English but whom we knew as The Pixie Child; he passed out onto Erin’s lap before disappearing in an explosion of fairy dust. Then an extremely drunken Irishman went to hit Erin on the head with a blue rubber flipflop after an impassioned argument about Catholicism; the thong made it within inches of Erin’s forehead before the Irishman slowly and gently teetered over on his side, falling straight to the floor and taking several beer bottles with him. Then a Scotsman yelling at us because we hadn’t heard of some religious lady named “Anoon”; eventually we worked out he was saying “a nun”. He settled down. At some point, we went home.

And awoke, a couple of hours later, to a cacophony. Behind our bungalow, at the Muay Thai gym, pasty Brits with exaggerated fantasies of themselves as Thai martial arts superstars were throwing each other around the ring and making exaggerated grunting noises while the clanging of flab against metal echoed off our thin bamboo walls. Off in the fields, a symphony of roosters were competing for the title of “Rooster Most Likely to be Violently Strangled by Lachlan”. And, just to add a touch of surrealism, a hidden man had set himself up in the reeds by the river with an alto saxophone and was shooting through his particular rendition of the classics with as much volume as he could muster.

It was time to leave Pai.

L.

IT’S DECEMBER: of 2008, now, in the 6th episode of the Ping Pong Ka-Pow odyssey, and as we get into the mountains of northern Thailand it’s starting to get a bit cold. So cold, in fact, that I decide it would be a good idea to grow a thick handlebar moustache to keep my face warm. Mmm.

Looking back, this time was probably the happiest of the entire trip, cruising about on empty-ish mountain roads perched upon rattling, cheap motorcycles, visiting villages and jumping about with fireworks. On the whole I enjoy catching buses and trains around the place – you get some interesting encounters that way – but nothing, nothing, nothing beats the utter perfection of a map and a motorcycle and an open road.

From what I wrote when we arrived in Mae Hong Son:

In Mae Sariang – a tiny town squeezed elegantly between the mountains and the river – we hired bicycles and rolled aimlessly through villages alive with the sound of country music blasting loud and proud from tinny radios. In the evenings we wrapped ourselves in whatever sweaters and beanies we’ve been able to gather together – Erin lost her gloves in Chiang Mai and Adam’s beanie flew off on the way down Doi Inthanon – and drank whiskey by the river, while (of all things) gangster rap played over the deck and fell into the lapping of the river along the shore.

The mountains are spectacular: it is thrilling to feel cold again, for the first time since – oh, let’s see here, August 2007? – and our eyes are blazing, and the blood is pumping thick through our veins, and today we are in Mae Hong Son, by the lake, and it is the Loi Krathong festival, celebrating the Goddess of Water, and there are blazing lanterns flying through the air, and candles floating in the lake, and we have a bag of fireworks for which we paid a dollar and which I am itching to throw at something.

And a couple of days later:

THE FESTIVAL: was a jubilant ejaculation of light and sound as hundreds of Thais, Burmese and various hill-tribes converged on the town to show their thanks to the Water Goddess by chucking as much plastic and styrofoam shit into the rivers and lakes as they possibly could. Then they shot off some fireworks, made the sky into a fiery sea of floating lanterns, bought some more plastic stuff, threw the packaging into the lake, and went home.

Job done.

Plastic waste aside, Mae Hong Son was a perfect little town. The festival was fun and full of colour, and I got to throw my $1 bag of fireworks around like an eight-year old with a year’s supply of red cordial coursing through his veins. The air was crisp and cold and excellent for long walks up the terraced walkway scaling the mountain to the temple to watch lanterns being launched into the night sky, and teenage monks clad in their orange robes surreptitiously gambling with their friends behind the cover of trees.

Wheeling motorbikes about the hills the day after, wrapped in beanies and sweaters, was something incredible. The road took us out along narrow ridges and across jagged ledges; we stopped at a cave full of sacred fish who are believed to be vegetarian – Thai families line up to throw them carrots and lettuce. Best of all was the English sign above the cave – “The cave is teeming with a crap species of fish” (presumably they meant “carp”). From there out past small villages full of screaming children to the last village on the map, Ban Rak Thai.

Ban Rak Thai was originally Mae Aw, and was basically a settlement of anti-communist Chinese soldiers arriving into Thailand as refugees after being booted by Burma several decades ago. The change of name (Ban Rak Thai means “The Village That Loves Thais”) was probably a publicity stunt to save a bit of face. Nowadays it’s the last town on the road before a sketchy dirt track leads out to a ‘No Foreigners Allowed’ border crossing with Burma. It remains a very Chinese sort of place, and we sat for endless cups of Oolong and Jasmine tea before the encroaching darkness and freezing temperatures sent us rolling back down the map. Past the screaming children, past Shan villages of solemn women in traditional clothes and grim-faced men with large knives strapped to their backs, past national parks of peaceful lakes surrounded by cliffs and forests of pine, back to Mae Hong Son and a warm bed before our morning ride to Pai.

L.

But we’re learning fast. And since we’re also major tightwads (I once sticky-taped my glasses back together rather than be forced into buying replacements), we’ve learnt quite a bit about the ins and outs of learning the language without having to pay for it. Here’s the Top Five:

[Side note - whenever I read an article like this, especially on the net, I'm always vaguely suspicious that the websites and products mentioned are sponsoring the article with buckets of cash. I wish that were the case, but no.]

1. Podcasts

For us, there is only one Spanish language podcast worth mentioning: Coffee Break Spanish, put out by the Radio Viva Network. Sure, there may be others out there of equal educational value, but none with a Scottish accent. And definitely none with such a catchy theme song (featuring such brilliant couplets as “Just be resilient / learning Spanish is dead brilliant” and “No haggis here, I hope that’s fine / Just a little español online”).

Instead of hiring yourself an expensive (and possibly incompetent) Spanish tutor, just plug those podcasts into some speakers, invite your friends around for sangria and burritos, and get stuck in. Easily the most enjoyable way to learn Spanish – though, depending on your sangria consumption, probably also the least effective.

2. The News

I’ve made it a point to, each day, pick a longer article from a Spanish-language newspaper and read it, slowly and carefully, until I know exactly what it says. This is a helluva lot harder than you might think. When I started learning Spanish I imagined that after three months I’d be able to start reading Cervantes – it doesn’t work like that. There are tonnes of Spanish language newspapers online; the two I tend to use are La Nacion, from Argentina, and El Universal, from Mexico - not because I think they’re any better than others I’ve come across – they were just the two addresses I happened to memorize first.

I also must mention News in Slow Spanish, an extremely useful podcast that does exactly what it says – reads out the week’s news in slow, clear Spanish. And for those in Australia, of course, there’s the good old SBS, showing news in Spanish daily.

Learning Spanish from the news is great for learning unusual words that you never see in the phrasebooks – I found out ‘terremoto’ means earthquake after the thousands of articles on the Haiti and Chile quakes – but still, I’m not sure how often the phrase el cuerpo había sido decapitado (“The body had been decapitated”) will come in handy when trying to find a hostel in Buenos Aires.

3. Word by Word

When I first started Spanish, I went onto wordreference.com, found out the Spanish words for everything in our apartment, and labelled them. Thus I know that a soap dish is a “jabonera” and a wall is a “pared”, and Erin coming home to find Blu-Tak all over everything is “not good” .

I don’t think this is a terribly great way to learn Spanish as you only get the nouns, and never the words that string them together – the most complicated sentence you’ll be able to build is “There is a soap dish on the wall”.  Nevertheless, I still defend it as a good way to think. If you look out your window every once in a while and think “There’s a grey car. Do I know how to say ‘grey car’ in Spanish?” or “The sky is really blue today - how would I say that in Spanish?” – it’s a good way to stay interested in the language, especially when the drudgery of verb conjugation starts to become the focus, and it keeps you aware of where your weak spots may be.

There’s a glut of sites on which you can learn the mechanics of the language and how to pull sentences together – the aforementioned wordreference.com, and spanish.about.com, are the two I use most regularly. Overall, I think they’re much less effective than a podcast, but for filling specific gaps in your knowledge or explaining a concept in a different way, they’re essential.

4. Telenovelas

Telenovelas, for those not in the know, are the classic Latin American soap operas, immensely popular throughout the continent. The head of Telemundo, Patricio Wills, joked that “a telenovela is all about a couple who want to kiss and a scriptwriter who stands in their way for 150 episodes”.

Most importantly – people in telenovelas speak clearly and enunciate well, and they speak like real Spanish speakers (well, okay, not really). The plots are classically simple and easy to follow. Have you ever tried to watch The Motorcycle Diaries or Y Tu Mama Tambien with the subtitles off? It’s really, really hard. People mumble and use slang, and really it’s just a confusing and mystifying experience if you’re starting out. Telenovelas are a better place to start. Go to Telemundo or to YouTube’s dedicated telenovela channel.

5. Make Friends

The best way to learn Spanish, just the same as in any other language, is to hang out with native speakers and just keep talking and listening til they get annoyed and go home. This is a hugely frustrating experience for the native speaker (imagine some guy coming up to you saying “Um, hello, my name Bill…my…big?…I am… to practice the English…there is a soap dish on the wall” and then wanting to talk to you all day) but hugely beneficial to you, so pretend you don’t notice their frustration.

Speaking with native speakers is really the only way to keep up with slang and colloquialisms, to know which phrases sound alright and which sound clunky or old-fashioned. If your circle of friends doesn’t include a Spanish speaker, jump on an internet forum of Latinos. The cloak of anonymity on a forum means you can find out even more about the language than otherwise – tip for beginners: provoking an Argentinean is the best way to get a handle on all the newest and most offensive swear words Spanish has to offer.

The most crucial element in becoming fluent in a language, though, is using it daily. Not as rote practice, not to impress girls, but to solve problems, to try to communicate, to express yourself. There’s no substitute for just working on it, day in, day out. ¡Buena suerte!

BACK TO: Thailand in this, the fifth episode of the Ping Pong KaPow series, as we cross the border from Cambodia at Aranya Prathet.

From the original blurb for this video:

From here we went our separate ways, with Erin having to go back to Bangkok for “work” (read: hitting small children with large sticks and relishing every bloodthirsty minute), Lachlan going north to “find himself” (read: drinking alone and crying himself to sleep while staring helplessly at his bony, girlish arms) and Adam going to Chiang Mai to “party” (read: feverishly masturbating into a sock while watching the Shopping Network). We envisaged that we would all film separate narratives and weave them seamlessly together into a masterful tapestry, but we found it far easier just to put up a “One Week Later” title screen and forget the whole thing ever happened.

It’s difficult to recall now just how demoralizing and soul-crushing it was to teach for so long in the government schools in Bangkok. And to go back? Erin has a lot more guts than I do, but still: that’s mental.

From something I wrote at the time:

GOING NORTH: felt great. The train ride was beautiful (if three hours late), dramatic mountains wreathed with mist, scaled with rice terraces; villages flooded by recent rains, the water level nearing the top of doorframes. (My train was the last for nearly twenty-four hours, as the track was washed out at several points). It was cold, and wet, and miserable, and perfect.

It was beautiful. It was just too bad that I ended up in Phrae. Well. That’s a little harsh; Phrae was a pleasant place to walk around during the day, with a large moat around the old town and old cobblestone streets lined with teak mansions and temples. And, for a town on the highway, the residents didn’t seem terribly used to Westerners – people screamed when they saw me; babies cried; dogs barked; birds swooped at my head. Which was nice. But I was travelling alone, and wanted to go out and have a beer, meet some people. There wasn’t much to do in Phrae, and by 9:00pm, everything was closed. So the next day I upped stakes and headed to Chiang Mai to meet up with Adam.

Good decision. Chiang Mai is amazing. It is everything Bangkok should be, but isn’t. Nestled in the mountains, it’s a beach town with no beach, an alpine ski resort with no snow. It’s lovely, and relaxed, and fun.

Adam and I hired some motorbikes to hit the mountain roads around Chiang Mai. Well, eventually, anyway: after a long, tortuous battle with our hangovers (involving several civilian casualties) we finally got our shit together at 3pm, which meant we were navigating most of the treacherous pot-holed downhill hairpin turns in complete darkness, while copping mouthfuls of various insects. But before that sun set behind those mountain ranges it was honestly one of the most beautiful rides I have ever embarked upon. The scenery is just stunning; a few times we just wordlessly stopped the bikes and stared. It was also bloody cold, which became more of a problem as the sun set. None of us have any tolerance to cold weather.

It was difficult to leave Chiang Mai, though we’d all been there a fairly long time. The city was a great, vibrant place to spend your nights, and the countryside around was bursting with perfect green valleys filled with mist. On our last day, Erin and I hired a bike and went up the slopes of Doi Suthep, the mountain which lurks behind Chiang Mai like a beautiful criminal. Past the temple that crowns the peak of the mountain, where stalls were selling cups of fresh strawberries; past the Winter Palace, where the royal family will soon be in residence. Past all that, over potholed roads, then gravel roads, then dirt roads, then a barely discernible track of mud and rock, to a tiny village clinging to the slope.

Towards the edges of northern Thailand, the populations of all the neighbouring countries begin to bleed together; you start to see villages of Lao and Burmese peoples. On top of that, there are the hill-tribes – the Shan, the Karen, the Lisu, the Hmong, and many others – people of the fourth world, who belong to no nation, without Thai citizenship, wandering from China to Myanmar, Thailand to Laos to Vietnam. The people in this village were Hmong; they were mostly kids, chasing skinny chickens around the spare wooden houses and riding motorbikes about the rough-as-guts dirt tracks that circumnavigated the settlement. We hung out for a while, wandering about the village (noting that here, on a mountain and several hours ride from any settlement of note, was the first Christian church we’d seen outside Bangkok – hill-tribes are one of the very few places in Thailand that missionaries have had any impact). Then back, stopping along the dirt track at a coffee plantation owned by an eccentric Californian who owned several parrots, including a 40-year old macaw as large as a dog. Below, the Hmong women picked coffee beans in their traditional tribal dress, all shy waves and toothless smiles.

And then away to Doi Inthanon. You know – travel is not so much fun when you’re stuck halfway up the highest mountain in Thailand, with no public bus up the 47km road to the peak. And being laughed at by national parks officials for believing the rumour that such a bus existed. After three hours on tuk-tuks, pickup trucks and motorbikes, it makes one feel pretty dejected. So we stood, and waited for something to happen.

Of course something happened. Something always happens, especially here, high above the humid plains. This particular something was a manic middle-aged Thai woman named Nanna, who proceeded to load us into the back of her ute and charge up the mountain at a furious pace, swinging wildly around corners beyond which postcard-perfect mountain vistas loomed with smug satisfaction.

Nanna was a beautiful, kind person. But she was also mental. She had some kind of connection to Thai embassies; she was keenly fluent in English, French, Thai, Japanese, Mandarin and Cambodian – a fact she showed us (to considerable applause) every time she spotted a suitable tourist sitting about. She had lived in Japan, France and the Cote d’Ivoire. She was travelling with her Japanese friends, showing them the sights; she said that she picked us up “out of love” and spent the whole day talking about our newfound friendship. And at every place we’d stop, she’d watch us wander around the waterfall / summit / visitor centre, and then, with a timing that seemed to have no relationship to whether everyone had finished looking, or whether people were in mid-sentence conversation with her, she would bark, “Okay! Let’s go!” and everyone would pile silently into the back of the ute like we were illegal migrant workers being trucked to our next cleaning job.

She left us in much the same dazed confusion in which she’d found us, deserting us on a street corner in town with vague directions to a bus, barking “Okay! Let’s go!” to her Japanese friends before blazing away down the dusty road. By the time we knew what was going on, we were on a bus to Mae Sariang, in the far northwest of the country, not two kilometres from the Burmese border.

And here, with our jobs in tatters behind us, we can finally say: no more commitments, no more attachments. The world is our oyster sauce.

WE ENDED: up leaving Siem Reap aboard a narrow longboat, chugging our way patiently across the heart of Cambodia, gliding over the vast Tonle Sap lake and up the river to Battambang, in the fourth installment of the Ping Pong KaPow series.

From what I wrote at the time:

After a good few days in Siem Reap, we woke at some ridiculous hour – 5:30am, or so – to catch the riverboat to Battambang, to the west. In a low-slung longboat we pushed out across Tonle Sap lake, through the wetlands and up the river. It was spectacular: in the wetlands we had several hundred birds – white storks and others – pushing ahead of our boat like a vanguard heralding our arrival. Up the river naked children playing in the fields waved and screamed and threw each other in the water, while serious-faced adults looked out silently from their floating huts. In the narrowest sections, we crashed up against other riverboats and had to wedge slowly past each other while the splintering wood of the creaking boats screamed as if in pain. And out on the lake, we could look out at nothing at all; just water pockmarked by reeds, as far as the eye could see.

…But…

…but after seven hours on a narrow wooden bench with no room to move, water slowly seeping through our pants and backpacks, we were very goddamn happy to see the end of that boat. And that is how we find ourselves in Battambang, a large town full of colonial buildings eroded by a half-century of disrepair, about which we know absolutely nothing, but of which I can make four observations: 1) everything is very cheap 2) it rains alot. Not just alot. An insane amount. Biblical proportions, and all that 3) electricity is, at best, unreliable here 4) the kids are very cute, but have a habit of trying to take things from your plate while you’re eating or standing by with a plastic bag waiting to seize your leftovers. Which is crushingly depressing, and guilt-inducing, and makes me want to cry.

This kind of poverty is something one sees fairly rarely, unless you go seeking it. Which makes Battambang all the more heartbreaking. Don’t misunderstand me here; the grinding evidence of poverty in Cambodia is breathtaking in its pervasiveness, no matter which part of the country you’re in. But in Battambang it hits you hardest, comes right up to your table at the run-down little food stand, dirty plastic bag in hand, begging for any scraps you may have left over, a sip of water, a cigarette. And that’s just the kids.

Battambang was among the provinces hardest-hit by the Khmer Rouge, and among the current community polio is even more rampant than the land mines. This means many people between twenty and forty are amputees or cripples, and that people aged over forty are close to non-existent. We saw one older person the entire time we were there – a lady of about sixty begging for change from passersby. It can be a very depressing place, at times. Still, the people are very nice and easygoing, and the town itself is wide and pleasant. There aren’t too many things in the world better than a morning stroll to the bakery for hot crusty baguettes, even if from the moment you buy them you are surrounded and assaulted by a scrum of street-children trying to get it straight out of your grubby, wealthy, suddenly-extremely-status-conscious hands.

Such grubby, guilty hands.

It rained constantly – not the usual, dreary, guy-in-the-street-pissing-on-an-old-mattress long-term rains we’re used to, but a punishing, pummeling, endless tropical downpour, a sudden and infinite wipeout that killed the electricity supply and flooded the streets and made me wet myself in fear (allegedly).

During one of the brief periods of sunshine we jumped a tuk-tuk to a cave, twenty kilometres out of town, where the Khmer Rouge massacred some ten thousand of their coutrymen. We were advised against a tuk-tuk, but there were five of us (a couple of Canadians we’d met came along) and we thought it would be cheaper. Two kilometres from the town centre I finally bore witness to the roads Cambodia is infamous for, running past glorious rice fields through massive, freight-truck-swallowing mud holes, puddles that would eat you and everyone you care about, given half a chance. Those twenty kilometres took one and a half hours, each way. The tuk-tuk broke down after four kilometres, was repaired, and then came within fractions of a degree of overturning with all us in it. And then it happened again. And again. And we didn’t even find the goddamn cave, after trekking up and down massive flights of stairs, having to bribe the tourist police, watching a French tourist being attacked by a monkey, coming to a mountaintop temple, and being stalked by a young Gollum-esque Cambodian man asking for money. And then we had to pile into the tuk-tuk and stave off vomiting for another one and a half hours.

Cambodia is so much fun.

The following day we headed out again, this time to the bamboo train, a small carriage made by villagers powered by a small lawnmower engine that runs up and down the (now disused) train tracks. There was a time when you could catch the contraption as far as Sisophon, near the Thai border. Now, according to the moto driver at our guesthouse, “you can only ride for to get your funnies” – it only runs for fifteen kilometres and is basically a tourist thing. But still: we got our funnies.

L.

Bodega Tapas Restaurant
April 2010

The suited crowd overwhelms as soon as you walk through the door – this is not the type of restaurant that the average Enmore gal feels comfortable in- but I soon ease into the trendiness that is Bodega, helped in part by our chatty waitress who gives us two options on where to sit. We opt to take the seats at the bar so that we could be close to the action.

Watching your food being masterfully prepared, by a blush inducing team, is truly a treat – for the ladies I cannot recommend sitting at the bar enough. Perching on our stools we sit back with the beer that we have ordered and bread and olive oil in hand and take in the show – that is once we have finally ordered.

Our waitress had to come back several times before were finally ready to order because, although not a large menu, everything sounds delicious and interesting. Dishes vary from the standard garlic mushrooms and calamari tapas to the more modern slow cooked lamb loin with roast garlic miso.

The first fifteen minutes of our night went something like this: How about the tamale…..but the octopus sounds good too….I heard that the lamb is a must try….O.k. I’m willing to drop the olives for the chorizo…..No, we have to get empanadas……..

We settle on the Marinated Olives, Argentinean style beef empanadas with salsa criolla, chorizo with sofrito paste, piquillo peppers stuffed with bacalao (dried cod salt) and a corn tamale with black beans and avocado. Our waitress approves of our choices.

Each of our dishes is brought over promptly, looking and tasting amazing. The peppers look vividly red against the green parsley sauce and have the salty taste to match. We are delivered a good selection of olives which come in a generous serve. The chorizo has a good amount of hotness and is fat and juicy. The home made corn chips are the perfect accompaniment to the guacamole and black beans and we just sit back and sigh at the sight of the corn tamale. There is no cheese or leaf wrap, instead there is a long streaming poached log. At first sight we just know that this one’s going to be good. We are not disappointed. The tamale is soft and yummy, but the star of the dish is the accompanying salsa which cuts through the corn with appropriate acidity. In fact there are no disappointments of the night.

With the pricing more than reasonable and the food undeniably scrumptious you would be hard pressed to find a tapas restaurant in Sydney that betters Bodega. We rolled onto the street feeling very smug and satisfecho indeed.

Info
Food: Tapas from $6-$32
Drinks: Bottled Beer from $7, Wine starts at $11 by the glass or $49 by the bottle- impressive selection of Spanish, Portuguese and South American wines with the price tag to match. No BYO.
No bookings taken. Don’t despair though, Bodega is of the in- eat-out el pronto nature, you shouldn’t have to wait long for a table.
Location: 216 Commonwealth St
Surry Hills
Phone: +61 2 9212 7766
Lunch: Thursday & Friday from 12pm
Dinner: Monday – Saturday from 6pm

IN THIS: section, we’ll be bringing you music, films, recipes, games and other bits and pieces we find during our travels.

Today, it’s Kai Look Kuoy, commonly known as ‘Son-in-Law Eggs’, a Thai dish we became particularly fond of which combines two of my favourite things: deep-frying and tamarind.

Having heard about this dish before heading to Thailand, we were very anxious to give it a go, but to our surprise it was actually quite hard to come across. That may be because the Thai word ‘kuoy’ or ‘koie’ is fairly difficult to pronounce properly, and also because most Thais will assume that a foreigner saying ‘kai’, which means ‘egg’, is actually just mispronouncing the word ‘gai’, which means ‘chicken’.

Tough language, Thai. Eventually, though, we came across a few people willing to whip it up for us, including the little takeaway restaurant at the bottom of our apartment building in Ari, so it became a favourite after-work snack. The best version we ever tasted was at Hemlock – check it out if you’re ever in Bangkok (you’ll find it on Phra Athit, in Banglamphu). It wasn’t on the menu but it was a stunner.

Where the ‘son-in-law’ moniker comes from is unclear. In her incredible World Vegetarian Classics, Celia Brooks-Brown opines that because the dish is so tasty, “I can only think the mother-in-law was really out to impress her daughter’s partner”. But considering the eggs are boiled, deep-fried in hot oil, and then sliced in half, I prefer to think of it as a passive-aggressive mother-in-law taking out her frustration at her daughter’s lousy choice of husband on the innocent but inanimate eggs.

But to the topic at hand – you’ll need the following:

For the tamarind sauce:

100g tamarind

2tsp grated fresh ginger

1tsp ground cumin

1 small red chili, sliced finely

2 tbsp soy sauce

For the eggs:

6 eggs

6 shallots, sliced finely

6 garlic cloves, sliced finely

Coriander, to garnish

Put the tamarind in a saucepan over medium heat and cover with a cup of boiling water. Bring it to the boil, prodding the tamarind with a wooden spoon to loosen it, and simmer for 15 minutes, by which time the seeds should falling away from the flesh. Strain it into a bowl, discarding the seeds and flesh and retaining the tamarind water. Add the garlic, ginger, soy sauce and chili, bring to the boil and simmer for about 15-20 minutes, until thick.

While the sauce is simmering, place the eggs in a saucepan and hard-boil. Drain and run them under cold water, and peel off the shells when they are cool enough to handle.

Fill a saucepan with enough oil to cover the eggs – about 5cm depth should do it. Heat it until the oil is shimmering and a piece of shallot sizzles immediately. Pour all the shallots and garlic into the oil for 1-2 minutes until golden, then drain on paper towels. Add the eggs and fry, rolling them with a wooden or slotted spoon, for about 5 minutes, when they should be crispy and golden and looking so damn good you might just pass out there, standing over the saucepan of hot oil (don’t).

Pull out the eggs, slice them in half, sprinkle the sunny side with golden-brown shards of shallot and garlic, douse with the tamarind sauce and whack a couple of coriander leaves on there for effect.

Taste that? Yeah, I know, it’s good. Let’s keep it between us.

L.

YES AND: now we’re cooking with gas in the third installment of the Ping Pong Ka-Pow series, as Adam, Erin and I push forward, out of Phnom Penh and up into Siem Reap and the temples of Angkor.

Okay, Siem Reap is tourist-y, to an extent not seen anywhere else in the country, but still: it handles itself fairly well. There’s a pleasant magnetism to the town, far from the otherworldly absurdism of Vang Vieng (Laos), the desperate sleaze of Pattaya (Thailand) or the grab-your-throat-and-poke-your-eyes-out tourist scrums of Lijiang (China). Good bars, good food, good atmosphere, and still with its regulation dose of Cambodian insanity intact.

[Point to illustrate the insanity comment: A British couple we spoke to went to a guesthouse that advertised itself as having a swimming pool - which it did, though the owners had filled it with twenty-four full-size crocodiles which they fed twice daily with whole chickens and pieces of goat.]

Erin and I, with a serious case of temple fatigue, skipped the Angkor temples, which we’d seen several months earlier (with me sweating and gibbering after one too many happy pizzas, falling about and staring at my hands as Erin trudged determinedly on through the heat). Adam went, and, as expected, came back awed but swearing that he never needed to see another temple so long as he lived.

From a post I wrote at the time:

Siem Reap buzzes; I think I wrote that last time I was here but there’s really no other word for it. We were the only people staying at our decaying wooden guesthouse so we had the run of the place like we were in The Shining or something; but two blocks away the bars and pubs heaved – Siem Reap, more than any other town, serves as the nexus of the Thailand-Laos- Vietnam-Cambodia travel circuit. We spent the days and nights chatting with Italian lion tamers and French journalists; Scottish vixens and British RAF soldiers fresh from Iraq and Afghanistan, over games of pool or rounds of 75c beers.

Adam went off to Angkor Wat to poke around the ruins; Erin and I spent the days doing… very little, really, except wandering here and there, like leaves blown about before a storm. Eventually we made our way down to Phnom Krom, a peaceful and deserted Buddhist temple placed elegantly atop a hill staring out in all directions at Tonle Sap, the biggest lake in South-East Asia, a magnificent blue haze that reaches out to the horizon and is specked with stilt villages and floating villages that change location depending on the water level and currents. It was a brilliant view, but an awful climb – the Cambodian sun is a cruel beast and it’s still a daily 38 degrees out on the plains.

The music from this clip is the untitled, uncredited track 11 from the excellent Cambodian Cassette Archives compilation put out by Sublime Frequencies, about whom, wow, I just can’t say enough. I will say that Cambodian Cassette Archives and the two volumes of Thai Pop Spectacular (also by SF) are far and away the best collections of vintage pop from that part of the world that ever have been or ever will be released, forever and ever amen.

L.

THIS IS: the second of nineteen episodes of ‘Ping Pong Ka-Pow’, documenting the three-month voyage Adam, Erin and I took around Asia late in 2008.

From the original blurb we posted with the video at the time:

[This is the episode in which] we leave Thailand, crossing the border into Cambodia in a van loaded down with several hundred kilograms of palm oil machinery because we just love palm oil so goddamn much that we almost want to marry it.

Also the episode in which we get snared by the bright lights of Phnom Penh. Sort of like moths pulled to a flame, except that there are no moths and no flame, just three sweaty white people trying not to get ripped off.

The trip across the border I remember being unbearably hot and frustrating, with a communication breakdown between us and the guy driving the van we were in that resulted in a  classic passive-aggressive slanging match, with each of us careful not to yell and lose face but doing everything up to that point.

After the initial kerfuffle, the rest of the six-hour trip into Phnom Penh was gorgeous – right up until the end, when we hit masses of traffic, our driver reneged on the agreed price and, when we refused to pay the extra, dropped us at a random street corner. Just to add to the confusion, a man immediately pulled up in an expensive car, claiming to be from the Thai embassy and offering to give us a lift to the guesthouse.

We got in. He took us in the wrong direction. We weren’t surprised. He took us to his friend’s guesthouse. We were even less surprised. In fact, we must have looked so glum that he got a bad case of the guilts, for within ten minutes he’d given us each three massive sacks of mangoes and offered to drive us back to the guesthouse we originally wanted.

The residents of Phnom Penh are like that, in my experience. Utterly inscrutable, completely unreadable, prone to unexpected and extravagant changes of heart, much like the city itself.

The rest of our time there we spent sitting on the lake, being offered pot by fourteen-year olds. I enjoy Phnom Penh, its rough edges, its all-pervading clouds of ash and dust, but the others had had enough, and two days later we were away again.

The music for this clip Adam obtained by asking one of the girls who ran the internet cafe in Siem Reap what her favourite music was. As such, we have no idea of the name of the track or the artist – if anybody has any idea please drop us a line.

L.

LATE IN: August 2008, Bangkok’s Government House was stormed by Yellow Shirt protestors, who succeeded not only in taking the entire grounds and surrounding streets, but in setting up camp there for several weeks despite all efforts to remove them. Their actions would eventually lead to the downfall of two prime ministers, but also to the rise of an opposing movement of Red Shirt protestors, the consequences of which continue to this day.

Four days after the initial capture of the House, Adam and I ventured into the area, shabbily cordoned off with walls of spare tyres and old bicycles. What we discovered inside was a group of incredibly friendly people passionate about their cause and their country and desperate to right the perceived wrongs that had occurred.

Four days after our visit, the prime minister, Samak Sundaravej – who doubled as a professional TV chef in his spare time – declared a state of emergency. Six days after that, the courts ruled that Samak stand down as prime minister due to his extracurricular activities. He was replaced with the brother-in-law of perhaps the most famously corrupt politician in Thai history, Thaksin Shinawatra.

In November, the Yellow Shirts took control of airports across the country, and by December there was a new party in charge, a party who have spent the fifteen months since battling the Red Shirts, who want things to go back to how they were.

The standard media narrative espoused by all the English-language newspapers was Yellow Shirts – good, Red Shirts – poor, stupid, misled and probably bad. Given that none of us could read Thai very well, this was the story we were told day in and day out, and it’s difficult even now to think of the situation in any other light. The fact that the Red Shirts were mainly rural poor, and the Yellow Shirts were mainly Bangkok middle class and students, probably coloured the characterizations a bit, though. In reality, no-one knows what’s best for Thailand except the Thais – and even they seem mighty confused at the moment.

This post is the beginning of a new section, From the Gallery, in which we’ll be posting photos from around the world. The photos in this post are all by Adam.

IN LATE: 2008, Adam, Erin and I embarked on an three-month trek through Asia, making a series of videos along the way. This is the first.

We’d met up in Bangkok in March of that year – Adam had been living there a while, working at a post-production company; Erin and I had been on our way to Canada but accidentally – and with Adam’s full assistance – spent our airfare on Chang beer and mechanical bull rides. Penniless, we had to get jobs as teachers at the government schools, corralling fifty unruly kids at a time armed with nothing but our wits, a microphone and a small assistant Thai teacher with a large stick.

Bangkok was a decomposing behemoth of a city, dizzying at first but increasingly stagnant as time went on. Month followed month and the noise, the heat, the smell never stopped. Riots broke out in August – the yellow/red divide that continues today – shutting my school down for a couple of days. I caught dengue fever, slowly turning purple in a small hospital with only a metal piss-jar for company. We reached breaking point. In a city of eight million people, we had cabin fever. At Adam’s urging, we kicked our jobs to the kerb and headed out, our first stop the island of Ko Chang.

This is the first of what would eventually be nineteen episodes, and we had yet to learn such sophisticated techniques as “telling a story” and “actually, you know, speaking to the camera”, or even, “maybe doing something on camera that the viewer might find interesting”. Still: baby steps.

The soundtrack is the ubiquitous ‘Doo Ter Tum’ by Job2Do, probably the biggest hit song of our time (in Thailand).

L.

My little brother and sister pitched in to get me registered with Willing Workers on Organic Farms in Mexico, Belize and Costa Rica. Now all we’ve gots to do is find a farm that wants a couple of soft white boys, and they’ll provide us with room and board in exchange for a few hours of our sweaty, whining labour each day.

A couple of handy phrases I’m memorising (apologies for my awful Spanish):

Trabajaría más duro si paró azotarme.

I would work harder if you stopped whipping me.

¿Qué es eso? Lo siento, yo no le puedo oír sobre el sonido de mi propio cuerpo que desploma de la insolación.

What’s that? I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of my own body collapsing from heatstroke.

Es una tradición en mi país de llorar como una niña a fines de cada jornada de trabajo, y durante interrupciones planificadas.

It’s a tradition in my country to cry like a little girl at the end of each work day, and during scheduled breaks.

Yo no pienso que el asno querría eso.

I don’t think the donkey would like that.

L.

We’ve not left yet but we’re gone already. Hasta volvemos!

L.