Nearly over

I think I´ve finally cracked hyperlinking ... we´ll see

After two failed attempts to dive on this trip (and one in NZ just before I left) I was starting to think I was jinxed. But I´ve finished off the trip with three days of spectacular diving and I can´t believe it´s nearly over.

I did two reef dives, two at Cozumel (unreal wall of coral) and today, two Cenote dives. When I first did scuba diving in the ocean, I said it was like flinding another planet. Well today I found another one again. Completely different. I loved it.

And now all that´s left to do is pack, get a bus to Cancun (I´m in Playa Del Carmen), pick up some luggage at Dreams and then I´m on a plane home. Obviously I´m not DREADING going back to NZ, but to be fair, I could easily go another couple of months out here. I have fallen in love love love (with the place and people in general - not an individual!!)

For those of you in NZ... see you soon. For those of you not... come and visit, for those of you I´ve met on this trip - thanks for makign it memorable... and come and visit.

Travel roles

Alex and I have travelled a lot togethere. Having travelled a lot together we had certain roles that each of us took becuase we were better at it than the other one. Alex looked after money (boys´ clothes just naturally have more pockets), I always organised the accomodation (partly becuase I´m fussier, partly because it just seemed like I would get rooms when Alex had just been told they were completley full for the next six weeks).

Anyway, it´s not that I can´t work exchange rates or when Alex goes traveling he can´t find places to stay and sleeps rough. It was just that we had our roles.

However there is one thing that was Alex´s role that was purely and simply because I am SHIT at it. Navigation (that´s ´finding places´ to the rest of us).

I couldn´t navigate my way out of a paper bag. I have no sense of direction. I get lost on the way to the bathroom.

But on this trip I have embraced this flaw and just not tried to go anywhere that isn´t really really close to where I am without a cab, or someone else accompanying me who can find their arse with both hands. And I haven´t been lost once (well not really, really lost, just `oh well that restaurant has obviously shut, moved or melted, I´ll just go to this one instead´lost).

Which is why I was very disappointed with myself today when I suddenly realised that when I´d left the ruins at Tulum and gone straight I should have taken a right in order to get back to my hostal.

Here is the list of reasons why this is particularly embarassing:

1. My hostal is about 600m from the ruins. I walked about 2km before I began to think I may have gone wrong
2. On my way to the ruins, I walked past a market, an info booth and some lean tos. On my way from the ruins I walked past a ticket booth and about five hotels before I suspected something was up
3. The fucking Carribean Ocean was on my left when it should have been behind me.

As landmarks go - that´s a tough one to overlook.

Back in Mexico

Following the previous post I decided to catch the ferry from Caye Caulker to San Pedro and do some diving and a couple of wildlife watching tours. I had heard that San Pedro was an upmarket (and more expensive) version of Caye Caulker and they did regular jungle tours etc. Arriving on the Caye I went into the tourist office to see if they could recommend a good budget hostel. They recommended Ruby's which was also in my guidebook. They only had a double room for the first night but there were singles available after that. I was keen to get my bag dropped off and go and sort my tours so I said ok once I'd seen the double room even though even the single room was going to be the most I'd spent so far at US$20 a night.

So I went and investigated and realised that my budget wasn't going to stretch to a diving trip and a wildlife one. So I opted for diving and booked it for today. Yesterday I moved to the single room. It had a padlock on the outside to shut it and from the inside just a rusty bolt in rotton wood to hold the door shut. There was a guy sitting under my window (and when I say 'window' I mean ´fly screen' watching the world go by and drinking a bottle of whiskey. When I returned from a wander he was plastered and tried to come into my room with me.

I went out later and confirmed my dive for today and he'd passed out in the room next to mine with the door open. He soon revived though. From inside my room I could hear him shouting to women to come up to his room around eight. Not one but TWO pimps popped by to see what he needed for the night. He was very specific.

He had a buddy who he was yakking to and from the conversation (which was taking place about a metre from where I sat on my bed with just the fly screen to dull the sound) I discovered that he´d been in the US security forces, he came to SP every year and always stayed at Ruby´s, that he had plenty of booze and drugs for the night, EXACTLY what he spent his time (and money) doing and he was claiming that he had slept with me (amongst many, many others).

At this point I was pretty fucking miserable to be fair. It was only 6.30. If I was going to use the bathroom or get something to eat I was going to have to walk right past this asshole and I was REALLY conscious of the shitty lock on the door and the fact that I didn´t really have a window pane in the window hole.

The thing is this ridiculous travelling pride thing. Every backpacker has a cache of stories about shitty accomodation and transport. About food poisoning, bed bugs and near death experiences. They wear them like badges and trot them out to show how passionate they are about travel, what they´ll endure to make a dollar go further and get an extra day/week/month in Asia/Europe/Central America. And when I say ´they´I mean ´we´. I am absolutely guilty of it. I´ve had shitty rooms, dodgy food and caught buses and trains that were marginally cheeper for much lower quality. I´ve even stayed in a brothel in Singapore before and actually felt perfectly fine with a decent lock and the knowledge that in a couple of days Alex would arrive to meet me and we´d laugh about it.

But after an hour of his ranting I´d had enough. I reckoned that booze, drugs, shitty locks and a solo female traveller who knew no one in the town combo was just too big a risk. I grabbed my stuff and legged it.

Unfortunately my cards, passport and cash was in the office safe (as I was planning to be out all day the next day diving) and I only had US$40 on me to pay my national park fee. The office was locked for the night.

To make a long story a little bit shorter, I had to cancel my dive, use the money to book into the (expensive but safe safe safe) hotel affiliated with the dive shop and I got out of there as soon as I had my stuff and am now relieved to be back in Mexico.

What a day!

Today I awoke to my first hangover of 2008. I remember now why I stopped drinking beer. I doubt it will be my last but I really, really did not enjoy the experience. Particularly as the plan was to go manatee watching and snorkling. I had planned to go with Alan and Julie, a Canadian couple that I met on the way to Flores in Guatemala. Peer pressure prevailed and I went. So rough but so glad.

Manatees, rays, parrot fish, pelicans, storks and a whole day on a boat. Lovely lovely lovely. Best way to shift a hangover. Although I'm still a bit seedy and definitely not drinking tonight! At least right now...

I'm in Belize (Ker, I'm totting up those countries!) which is beautiful but a lot more expensive than the other places I've been so I think I'll do some wildlife watching in the next couple of days and get out of here. Back to Mexico, a final set of ruins and a few days on the beach before the mammoth trek back home.

A couple of days ago I watched the sunrise over the jungle and Tikal and heard howler monkeys, toucans and parrots wake up. One of the best things I've done on this trip and probably ever. For those of you in NZ, if you don't want to be bored to death by photos, you should avoid me for the first couple of weeks!

Why I love New Zealand

Facebook is the shit. It really is. While I was on there today loading photos I noticed that one of my kiwi friends had updated her status to ´is sad about Sir Ed´. Realising that she probably meant Sir Edmund Hillary I rushed to the NZ Herald website to find out what happened. Below is a small extract from the piece;

'To the people of the Himalayas, he was a god. Around the world, he was regarded as the greatest of adventurers, the man whose extraordinary endurance forever changed perceptions of human possibility.

And for New Zealanders, Sir Ed was everything a good bastard ought to be...'

Only only only in NZ would they say 'XX was everything a good bastard should be' on an award winning, media website.

Never in a million years would you see that on the home page of the The Guardian or The Washington Post or The Irish Times. Can you imagine? ´Today we mourn the death of the Arch Bishop of Canterbury - a thoroughly good bastard´,´Millions flocked to pay tribute to one of our nation's best bastard - Stephen Spielberg´, ´Our country is in shock on hearing of the tragic death of one of our good bastards, Eammonn Dumphy´ Atually if you left out ´good´in the last one I could imagine that in print.

I think it´s fucking brilliant. Full link below for anyone who would like to read the rest of the tribute which has some very endearing stories about a real hero.

Driving in Guatemala

Here are some things I have learnt about driving (that´s being driven in my case) in Guatemala.

1. Suspension is for the WEAK.
2. (Speedlimit + 40KMPH) x (Cobbled streets + 1000 years of earthquakes/subsuidence) = (Becoming airborne x a lot)
3. Vehicles in front of you are to be taken over AT ALL COSTS and regardless of speed, size or proximity to oncoming traffic.
4. Use of a single indicator makes you a pussy. If indicators must be used, use your hazards and keep your options open
5. Car jacks are not to be relied on. However this does not mean that you should inconvenience any of the people by asking them to get out of the vehicle while you change a tyre.
6. Sometime animals just like to hang out on the road.
7. If you´re taking the corners at the right speed, the centrifugal force should extract DNA from your passengers.
8. You should accelerate AS FAST AS YOU CAN as soon as all doors are shut. This will aid the passengers who are still standing to find their seats. If they find them with their face rather than their arse... well at least they´ll reach their destination 1/8th of a second faster.
9. If you are a passenger and attempt to rest your head on ANYTHING in an attempt to sleep, you will aquire a dent in it. This dent will be painful but you will be utterly unable to stop yourself from prodding it for the next four days to see if you can still fit your finger inside it.
10. If you get a ridiculously cheap fare it´s because they are paying their driver youth rates. They are paying him youth rates because he is a youth. I.e 14 tops.
11. 14 year old drivers are much more cautious and look like they´re going to cry when you all almost die. Which is nice.
12. If you are hot and the fans aren´t working. Simply mention it to your driver. He will very helpfully, scoot over to the passenger side of the vehicle and and open the other window. It´s important to note that he will definitely still be driving at the time. He may even be overtaking.
13. Sitting in the front seat or anywhere where you can see how close you almost came to hitting whatever if was is foolish, foolish, foolish.
14. Beeping is the punctuation of the highway. It is to be used regularly.
15. No matter how much you tell yourself that your outfit is comprised of sufficient layers to perfectly match all altitudes, speeds, seasons, times of the day and level of exposure to the elements/ open air nature of the vehicle, it fucking isn´t. You will be FREEZING at some point. At another point you will be far, far, far far far too hot. This may repeat depending on the journey.

Are you serious?

I will preface this with a disclaimer. I am not a touch typist and this keyboard had has all of the letters apart from qwypfj rubbed off.

When it comes to jewlellery, as I often say, I´m definitely quantity over quality. I generally prefer the look of tat to expensive stuff, I crave variety and I lose earrings at a scary pace. But occasionally when I travel I do like to try to get somehting ´nice´and local. The big four here are silver, jade, obsidian and turquoise. I´ve alteady stocked up on silver as that falls into the same price bracket as tat in many places. Now buying jade in CA and taking it back to NZ is a bit sand to Arabs and snow to Eskimos and obsidian - neh. But Turquoise is my birth stone, and pretty, so I´ve had a look at a few shops.

Today I went into a jade shop thinking they would have turquise also. They didn´t. But they did have a very smart looking and smiley man who I said good afternoon to and smiles at before realising he was holding a BIG FUCKING MACHINE GUN.

Tribute to a faithful travel companion

Having ignored the absolutely true adage, a stitch in time saves nine, my rucksack lid has needed major surgery to halt the decline of the seams and prevent it coming away in someone´s hand, possibly as it was being lifted onto the roof of a bus. Today it got to crisis stage and I finally had a chance to track down a needle and thread in a hardware shop.

I bought twenty needles, partly because this was the quantity they came in and partly because sewing through two layers of that fake canvas they make rucksacks out of, two layers of waterproofing and, in some cases, a triple reinforced seem, I anticipated it would take about ten needles to repair the twenty or so cm of damage.

Now I know that it´s a funny thing to pick as your first thing to RAVE about when you get to a new country (and let me be clear- I am finding Guatemala enchanting and will no doubt prattle on about that at some stage soon), but these needles were frickin fantastic. Seriously. I didn´t break a single one! You could sew rhino hide with these babies.

My sewing is rough as bricks and rucksack is not pretty but what rucksack is?

I bought my rucksack in Scotland and since then it has flown, bussed, hitched, ferried, trained, trekked, shuttled, cabbed, biked, sailed, hiked, driven, scootered and riden through 20 countries with me. It´s been thrown, slid, hefted, hoisted, dragged, dumped, dropped and pulled by every possible strap, support and grip on it thousands of times.

Its harness had to be replaced after a particularly disastrous attempt to hitch in a national park in Kangaroo island, South Australia, it´s missing one of it´s clips and it is truly truly FILTHY in an ingrained, will never again be clean, kind of way. I think this is its last trip.

The next inatallment

It´s been a whirlwind I tell ya. A real whirlwind.

I´m currently in Panajachel in Guatemala having just crossed the Mexican border a few hours ago.

After the blissful holiday with the clan in what was really really a BEAUTIFUL resort, I have gone solo and have visited Campeche, Pallanque, San Cristobel de la Casa and, as mentioned, am currently in Pana on Lake Atitlan. So much to tell so will share some highs and lows.

HIGHS (in no particular order)
Seeing the fam
Having dolphins under the bedroom window every morning while I was in Cancun
Completely, completely relaxing after a big year
New Years in Mexico with my clan
Old buildings - some of them really old!
Lovely, lovely people
Realising that arriving in a new place will never, ever lose it´s appeal for me
Being able to do exactly what I want

Lows
Getting slightly sick for the whole time I was in Cancun meaning that my one attempt to dive turned into an expensive lesson that equalising is not possible when you´ve got a runny nose
Getting groped outside a church and realising I don´t know the Spanish for 'fuck off'

I think that´s it for the lows. Not bad for three weeks of travel I reckon.

For those of you on Facebook I am trying my hardest to upload some photos but it´s proving a challenge. For those of you not on Facebook.... get on there, this is 2008 for chrissakes!

Next installment

So Im writing this in stages and way behind but I did really want to relay this story as i think i have unearhted a sinister international conspiracy.

I got to the airport in Mexico City to fly to meet the fam in Cancun. Now my experiences of flying in Peru taught me that flight times are a guideline at best. So I wasn't 100% sure that I would be landing on time. However...

She said somehting quickly in Spanish and although I don't speak Spanish I'm pretty sure that she said that my tickets had been cancelled. I repeated it in english and she nodded and went on typing furiously. Evenetually the guy on the next desk leaned in and said, 'Your flight's been cancelled' When i aksed why, he simply said 'No pilots' in the same way that you might say, 'we're out of diet coke'. 'Ah,' I said.

Eventually they put me on a flight leaving three hours later.

However the clan were planning to meet me at the airport as their flight was getting in at roughly the same time. I asked if I could call the hotel in Cancun. I was sent to the information desk.

Eventually I spoke to someone who took me into a back office and introduced me to a girl who could make a phonecall for me. I felt bad interrupting her cigarette break (there was a lit cig smouldering away on her keyboard) but she was very nice. Unfortunately I didn't have the number for the hotel. I suggested the internet. This illicited gasps of incredulity, 'We don't have inernet in this office!' Or a phone book or in fact anyway of looking up a number.

So I went to an internet hub and failed to find the website for the hotel. I found a million websites where I could book a room in the hotel, a million places where i could look at pictures. But noone had a freakin number. So I had a brainwave. I'll leave a message with their airline.

So I walked to the international section of the irport. Queued for 40 mins in the check in queue which doubled as a info queue. When I got to the top of the line, I told the gent from American Airlines that I wanted to get a message to American Airlines in Cancun, 'You want to get a message to American Airlines in Cancun?!?!?! That is impossible. How would i do that?' Eventually he recommended that I call them. So I asked for a number for their Cancun office. This resulted in a many more raised eye brows and looks implying I was asking for something entirely unreasonable. Eventually he gave me a number in the states for customer service and I treked back to my airline and queued again for the info desk.

To make a long story short when I eventually got to call AA I got a 'computer says no' response. It is impossible to get messages to people travelling on AA. Under any circumstaces.

So here's my theory. The airline industry survives only because some things just have to be done in person. Attending weddings, diving in the carribean, celebrating xmas with your family. However modern telecommunications, (phone, internet, email, teleconference etc) is making the more mundane, day to day stuff possible without any travel. The airline industry is resisting this by not embracing any of this technology themselves and making it as hard as possible to communicate (even internally!!) with people. Bastards. I bet not a single one of them has a decent internal communications manager.