tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96774592024-03-07T05:38:01.754+01:00A Long Way From AnywhereTravel reports from my attempt to visit every country in the world.Steve McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14821039898589441072noreply@blogger.comBlogger55125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9677459.post-19461705828987737542011-02-01T15:00:00.000+01:002011-02-01T15:00:57.113+01:00Ten Things I’ve Done That You (Probably) Haven’t<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<a href="http://www.aidandoyle.net/2011/02/01/ten-things-i%E2%80%99ve-done-that-you-probably-haven%E2%80%99t/">Aidan Doyle posted his list of ten things he had done that the rest of us (probably) haven't</a>.<br />
<br />
Here's my list:<br />
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Been teargassed by the Ecuadorean army</li>
<li>Been rescued from near-drowning by holidaying Dutch policemen in Cuba</li>
<li>Entered the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Exclusion Zone</li>
<li>Been outdrunk in shots of vodka by an 84-year-old Russian babushka</li>
<li>Had a song composed about me and sung to me by a bunch of villagers in Sulawesi, Indonesia</li>
<li>Received free treatment in an Iraqi hospital</li>
<li>Spent the night sleeping (really!) in a brothel in the Sahel, Mali, West Africa</li>
<li>Found my name in the credits of <a href="http://cyberduck.ch/">popular Mac open source software</a></li>
<li>Arrived at an airport without knowing what country I was in</li>
<li>Pretended to be a foreigner in my own country due to acute embarrassment at forgetting which side of the road to drive on ("Sorry, I am comink from Germany. We drive on the wrong side.")</li>
</ul><div><br />
</div><br />
<div><br />
</div></div>Steve McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14821039898589441072noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9677459.post-55221010331071697682009-12-31T12:26:00.000+01:002009-12-31T12:26:13.208+01:00Top 7 Travel Destinations for 2010My friend <a href="http://www.aidandoyle.net/">Aidan</a> and I were disappointed with the run-of-the-mill "Where to go in to 2010" travel lists in the media. We made our own. Here's mine:<br />
<ul><li>Train from Western Europe to Vietnam. The journey is the destination. Challenge: how many cheap bottles of vodka can you consume during the journey.</li>
<li>Albania. You'll be almost sure of being the only in your group of friends who has been there.</li>
<li>Mongolia. Yurts, polytonal singing, so photogenic even a camera putz can take good photos there.</li>
<li>El Salvador, Nicaragua, or Honduras. Especially Nicaragua. Have you seen how crazy cheap the top hotels are in Nicaragua? Best hotel in the country is $100/night.</li>
<li>Greenland, following in the footsteps of politicians who jet there with a large entourage, to show how much they care for the environment.</li>
<li>Lebanon. See it while a rare period of calm lasts. Soon they'll be blowing each other up again.</li>
<li>Paraguay. Unspoiled by tourism. Cheap. Assured source of wacky travelogues.</li>
</ul><div>Aidan pointed out that my list could be titled <b>"least touristed places that you won't get shot in."</b></div><div><b><br />
</b></div><div>Here's Aidan's list:</div><ul><li>China (big enough that once you get away from the big cities you won't</li>
<li>find many tourists)</li>
<li>Mongolia</li>
<li>Moldova, Belarus, Ukraine, Macedonia</li>
<li>Greenland</li>
<li>Lebanon</li>
<li>Colombia</li>
</ul><div>Kudos, Aidan, for including Colombia. My favourite travel destination. Possibly more beautiful than my homeland, New Zealand, with lots of friendly people, plenty to do and see, and it is cheap, cheap, cheap, due to an undervalued currency.</div><div><br />
</div>Steve McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14821039898589441072noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9677459.post-65063333866338020162008-09-06T13:22:00.002+02:002008-09-06T13:25:13.740+02:00Some Great Colmbian Transport Photos<a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/794882@N25/">These photos are full of Andean colour</a>. The atmosphere they invoke are just one of the many things I love about Colombia.Steve McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14821039898589441072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9677459.post-49727753969023419292008-04-10T20:07:00.002+02:002008-04-10T20:21:51.747+02:00Learning a Language While TravellingI've got a hot tip for anybody who wishes they could converse a bit with the locals when abroad. I am particularly ungifted at learning languages, yet this has worked even for me.<br /><br />You'll need an iPod or some other MP3 player, and about US$30<br /><br />The tip is to buy and use Pimsleur Conversational language courses. They are excellent and so well made that they are almost fun to use. Each course is 16 lessons, each 30 minutes long. No grammar, real phrases, and stuff you can use from day 1. You can get them on the web, for example Amazon.<br /><br />I first tried Pimsleur's Spanish lessons while in South America. Each evening I lay on my bed in my hotel room doing the lesson. Then I would immediately go out and use a few of the words I learned with my hotel clerk or in a restaurant, or with whoever I happened to meet. After a few days I tried the phrase with a local in Colombia, "I want to eat something". I was flabbergasted when she understood perfectly what I said and then responded with an exact phrase I had also learned that day - which I could also answer. A week later I was able to go into a Colombia travel agency and buy tickets, while only speaking Spanish.<br /><br />After 4 weeks of such lessons my girlfriend joined me and I felt pleased - and maybe a little smug - as her jaw drop when I got into an easy conversations in Spanish, even if they were only basic conversations.<br /><br />I've since used this same technique to learn a little Swahili in Kenya and Tanzania, a spattering of Hebrew in Israel, and enough French to understand hotel and restaurant staff. It's a great feeling to achieve this, doubly so for me because I always got terrible grades in languages at school.<br /><br />Particularly fun was Swahili. As a tourist in Zanzibar, for example, I was a magnet for people trying to hawk things. But when I would say in Swahili "No thank you, I am not interested", the whole interaction would change for the better. And other tourists would wonder how I got to know such a language.Steve McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14821039898589441072noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9677459.post-4874262530046181632008-04-07T17:58:00.002+02:002008-04-07T18:08:07.236+02:00Great Travel Destinations for VegetariansSince I became a vegetarian I've travelled to some 70+ countries. Some particularly stood out for the quality of the vegie food, as well as the range and ease to find.<br /><br />So here's my top 3 of countries that are highly interesting AND vegetarian-friendly:<br /><br />#3: Thailand. Fresh, tasty, healthy, cheap. Just about every menu has a sizable vegie section. But I found that if I wanted something else, I could simply ask for a meat dish to be made with tofu instead of meat. The restaurants were always willing to do it.<br /><br />#2: India. A high percentage of Indians are vegetarian, which makes vegie restaurants easy to find. There are just as many "veg" restaurants as there are "non-veg", and they proclaim it boldly on their outdoor signs. So many vegetarian restaurants that I thought I had died and gone to vegetarian heaven. Common is the "veg thali", a sort of sampler plate with three or four different dishes, rice, bread and salad. Away from the tourist-oriented shops I was paying less than 1 Euro for as much as I could eat, and a drink too.<br /><br />#1: Israel. Probably a big surprise for most people - it certainly was for me. Any kosher restaurant or cafe will do. Part of kosher cooking is not to mix dairy products and meat products. So when you walk into a restaurant in Jerusalem, a waiter usually asks "meat or dairy". I would simply say "dairy" and I would be show to the part of the restaurant where the food has no meat - and furthermore is guaranteed to have been prepared with utensils and kitchen equipment that is never used with meat.<br /><br />So why is Israel my top choice? The sheer range of cooking styles you get in a cosmopolitan land.Steve McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14821039898589441072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9677459.post-42665170976474050682007-05-09T21:22:00.000+02:002007-06-12T21:33:06.273+02:00Photos from India and Africa<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/167/439621838_aac93e072e_m.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;" src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/167/439621838_aac93e072e_m.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/199/483605905_229e5a2318_m.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;" src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/199/483605905_229e5a2318_m.jpg" alt="" border="0"></a><font>After spraining my ankle on Mt Kilimanjaro followed by a couple of weeks of idyllic idleness on <font id="st" name="st" class="st">Zanzibar</font>, I'm back in Germany and soon to start work in Frankfurt again. <font id="st" name="st" class="st">Zanzibar</font> is a place that sounds ridiculously exotic - and it is. It's a tropical paradise that blends African, Arabian, and Indian culture. One of my favourite places I've travelled to.<br /><br />Here's some <a href="http://flickr.com/photos/smcleod/sets/72157600036114216/" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">Indian photos</a> and some <a href="http://flickr.com/photos/smcleod/sets/72157600175206605/" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"> African photos</a>.<br /><br /><br /><br /></font>Steve McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14821039898589441072noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9677459.post-64969137348187734672007-04-12T16:56:00.000+02:002007-04-27T16:59:49.340+02:00Kenya: Scary Safari StoriesI'm writing from a town on the lower slopes of Mt Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. It's the highest mountain in Africa and even as I swelter in the equatorial heat, the almost-ever present clouds occasionally part, revealing a peak partly covered in snow and ice.<br /><br />I spent the last week or so in Kenya, where I went on safari in the Masai Mara National Park. It's an extremely large reserve where wild African animals live in an unspoiled environment while safari vans zoom around trying to get close enough to the animals for tourists like me to stick their head out of the open roof to take photos.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Scary Safari Story #1</span><br /><br />We were lucky enough to see three very hungry lions - one male lion and two females - hunting. They had a clever strategy, moving slowly in a v-shaped formation, with the two females somewhat ahead and to the left and right of the male. They slunk through the long, dry, brown grass, trying to trap an impala. However the impala was far too quick so the lions remained hungry.<br /><br />Sometime later our safari van got a puncture, and we had to stop to replace the tyre. The driver needed our help, which meant we had to get out amidst that same long grass that camouflages hungry, hunting lions so well. The driver wasn't so happy with the whole deal and asked us - needlessly - to stay as close to the van as possible. I used the avoid-the-sharks-while-swimming-at-the-beach strategy, and made sure I was always closer to the van's open door than at least one other person. I think we set a new world record for amateur tyre-changing, and we even gave those Formula One pit-stop guys a run for their money.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Scary Safari Story #2</span><br /><br />We slept for two nights in tents at a campsite just outside the Masai Mara national park. No fences mark out the border of the national park, only a small creek which any animal worth worrying about could easily cross. The campsite was run by a Masai guy, one of the tall, slender people who wear blankets and mutilate their earlobes into long, elastic shapes and look <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/masai">something like this</a>. After the sun had set we sat around a campfire and the Masai guy told us fascinating stories about how elephants and hyenas sometimes wander through the campsite in the night while everyone is sleeping. Even a lion, he said, had been known to pass through.<br /><br />Fascinating stories indeed - until I woke up at 3am in the morning with a really strong need to go to the toilet. Outside I could hear unfamiliar howling noises that resembled those hyenas I had heard from a distance earlier. I tried to go back to sleep, hoping the pressing need would go away, but of course it never does; it just gets more demanding. Eventually in desperation I got up and put on all my clothes, hoping that my trousers were permeated with special wild-animal-repelling chemicals. I opened my tent zipper just wide enough to stick my head out, terrified that a hungry lion with a taste for human meat was waiting outside my tent, ready to swipe me with a powerful claw as soon as my head appeared. But there I saw, in the middle of the campsite, the Masai guy sleeping on a deckchair next to the embers of the fire. (In the morning the Masai told us that he sleeps on the deckchair every night, to keep the hyenas away.) Seeing him gave me the confidence to quickly go outside and do what I had to do, while every rustle in the nearby bushes had adrenalin pumping through my body. I can't describe how sweet the relief was when I got back in my tent.<br /><br />The next night I made sure not to drink anything for a few hours before going to bed.Steve McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14821039898589441072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9677459.post-81965564858272577132007-03-05T09:06:00.000+01:002007-03-24T07:23:01.568+01:00Burning Bodies and Police Brutality in Filthy IndiaI've been in India for the last week, and despite an unpleasant first impression, I've begun to see what fascinates people with India and keeps them coming back. I was on a boat on the Ganges river at sunset, here in Varanasi. If you don't know the name of this city, you've definitely seen it on TV. It's the place where the Ganges is holy and millions of India pilgrims come each year to bathe on the steps in the polluted water and wash away their sins. The Hindus believe that if you die here, you avoid having to be reincarnated and therefore achieve eternal peace.<br /> <br />On the boat ride I saw a dead body in the water and funeral pyres burning on the river's edge - my boatman in his broken English called them "body burn fire". Near me was a boat containing a group of orange-robed, shaven-head buddhist monks using digital cameras and video cameras. Loud and colourful religious ceremonies took place on the river bank, people were washing in the water and - yep - even drinking the holy water. Monkeys ran up the walls of temples, while 30 or 40 women in another passing boat performed a call-and-response chant. Burning candles floated around the boats. Kids on boats with their fathers flew kites. I finally started to find something intensely remarkable and enjoyable about India. Until...<br /> <br />...until I got off the boat and the boatman demanded twice the amount we had agreed upon beforehand. He followed me, telling me why he deserved more, until finally I stuffed the agreed amount in his hands, raised my voice and told him "finito, fertig, finished, over. go away". I think this embarrassed him in front of the people nearby and he slinked away.<br /> <br />India assaults all the senses. The streets are filled with stinking, rotten garbage and with holy cow dung from the holy cows that freely wander the streets. Especially in Delhi, the smell is sometimes so bad I have to hold my breath or start gagging. There is noise, always noise in India. I suspect there is a law that says drivers are compelled to use their horns at least once every minute. This traffic noise goes all day and most of the night and when it stops the stray dogs start barking. I haven't had a good night's sleep since I've been here. The thick smog sticks to the sweat on my skin, deadening my sense of touch. The delicious spicy food is even better than I expected and it has burnt out my tastebuds. And the sights I've seen in India are definitely colourful.<br /> <br />Yesterday was a festival called Holi. It celebrates a time when the God Vishnu caused an evil queen to be burned alive. For some reason this is celebrated by throwing coloured powder at people and water too. Before too long all the people in the street had multi-coloured faces, then multi-coloured hair, and eventually even multi-coloured clothes. Tourists are popular targets, and people who ventured out from my hotel soon returned needing a shower and a change of clothes. I chose to watch most of it from the hotel's rooftop terrace.<br /> <br />From the terrace I also was witness to some police brutality. A couple of police cars came up the street, stopped suddenly and with long bamboo rods the policemen started beating a guy around the head and legs. When he hit the ground they kicked him for a bit, then threw him in the back of their car. The police then started beating another guy with their bamboo rods but he pleaded with them and they let him go. It was shocking to see this firsthand.<br /> <br />No case of Delhi Belly so far...Steve McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14821039898589441072noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9677459.post-18887603327359410032006-12-20T23:31:00.000+01:002007-01-28T23:36:26.717+01:00Germany, Portugal, South of France, TurkeyBeing in Germany for the soccer World Cup was a great experience. For the first couple of weeks it was like a non-stop carnival in the streets of the cities. Strangely the German culture seemed to change a bit during the world cup, with people doing typically un-German things, being more laid-back, starting conversations with<br />strangers, celebrating even when they lost, the police not pulling me over when<br />I rode my bike through red lights right in front of them. It was a much nicer<br />country!<br /><br />I did manage to make a couple of short trips during the European summer. First<br />I caught up with an Australian friend, Rob, in Portugal for a week. The most<br />memorable event in Portugal was when we accidentally spent an hour or so in a gay bar. Despite the overly-well dressed male customers and the music that got more camp with each track, neither of realised what type of an establishment it was until I spilt my drink on my crotch and attracted a bit of unwanted attention as I tried to<br />clean up the mess.<br /><br />The second trip was a disillusioning long weekend spent driving along the almost mythical "South of France", visiting Marseilles, Nice, Cannes, and Monaco . The south of France turned out to consist of over-priced, over-crowded coastal cities. In Nice, for 25 euros you were allowed to sit on a little spot on the stony beach for the day, where you could admire the other people who also paid 25 euros to be wedged in shoulder-to-shoulder on a patch of gravel. Monaco was especially ugly, with<br />more bland concrete apartment blocks than I would have thought possible crammed<br />into a mountainous coastal bay. Having said that, between the towns the stark<br />rock formations that made up the landscape was magnificent and the water was a<br />remarkable azure blue.<br /><br />The third and last trip I made over summer was 10 days in Turkey, I looked at old Greek and Roman ruins in biblical ex-cities, I trundled around the Gallipoli battlefields for a day with busloads of tourists from Australia and New Zealand, and I finished up in Istanbul. Istanbul is one of the most fascinating cities I've seen. There must be at least 6 cathedral-sized mosques in the city, each consisting of domes upon domes and ringed with minarets, the towers that call people to prayer five times a day. The city is half in Asia, half in Europe, with ferries constantly travelling along the coasts and backwards and forwards across the great waterway. There are a few old wooden palaces that remain from the times of the Ottoman empire, and every second street contains an old broken Ottoman-era fountain. The eating was<br />excellent, with some of the best vegetarian cooking I've tasted. It was the<br />month of Ramadan while I was there, which is when Muslims eat and drink nothing<br />at all during daylight, then have a big feast at night the moment the imams<br />officially declare that the sun has set. This created a festival atmosphere<br />every night. Istanbul is high on my lists of places to visit again.Steve McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14821039898589441072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9677459.post-68865933501910480372006-12-15T23:27:00.000+01:002007-01-28T23:36:13.958+01:002006: Year in ReviewA Swiss friend wrote an e-mail to me last week, saying that because she hasn't<br />heard from me for a while, she assumes I haven't been doing much travelling. I have managed to add a few new countries to my list this year. At the beginning of the year I hitch-hiked across the Sahara, which is just about the stupidest way to spend a month's holiday. Afterwards I recuperated in Colombia, which is just about the best way to spend a month's holiday. I got tear-gassed in Ecuador, en route to<br />Peru. <br /><br />Compared with that the rest of the year has been rather mundane. Since May I've been working again in Frankfurt as an IT consultant. It's pretty dreary stuff,<br />wearing a suit everyday, working on mind-numbingly dull projects for<br />statisticians and economists. Not to say that all statisticians and economists<br />are mind-numbingly dull - one of the two good things about the job is I get to<br />work with interesting people from all over Europe. (The other good thing is they pay me on a regular basis).<br /><br />A couple of brief and belated updates will follow soon.Steve McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14821039898589441072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9677459.post-1147615646904184332006-05-14T16:06:00.000+02:002006-08-21T10:23:10.643+02:00Venezuela, Colombia, Peru: Photos<a href="http://flickr.com/photos/smcleod/sets/72057594119496121/">Take a look at the photos I took this year in Venezuela, Colombia and Peru</a>.Steve McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14821039898589441072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9677459.post-1145912937000385382006-04-24T22:50:00.000+02:002006-08-21T10:24:11.446+02:00The Road to Timbuktu: Photos<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/smcleod/sets/72057594116062026/">See the best of my photos from my trip to Timbuktu via Morocco, Mauritania and Mali</a>.Steve McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14821039898589441072noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9677459.post-1147615534687756392006-04-09T16:03:00.000+02:002006-05-14T16:05:34.716+02:00Peru: Whale in the DesertI spent the last two weeks in Peru, where I saw a whale in the desert, spotted condors flying over a canyon 3 kilometres deep with ancient terraced slopes, and visited a village situated on man-made islands that float around Lake Titicaca.<br /><br />The whale in the desert was one of the Nasca Lines, ancient carvings each about 100 metres long, that can't be identified from the earth. When seen from an airplane you easily spot carvings of animals, birds, and people. Why these figures were carved hundreds of years before the technology to view them existed is one of those mysteries which nutcases love. Some claim the figures were made by or for aliens.<br /><br />I took a 30 minute flight to see the Nasca Lines in an airplane that has room for only 5 passengers. The first 2 minutes were fun. Then as the first figure came into sight, the pilot banked sharply so the passengers on the left could see the figure. Then he banked the other way, which allowed the other passengers to see the figure, and allowed my recently-eaten breakfast to try to escape my stomach prematurely. With each new figure came two more violent turns by the pilot, and more opportunities for my stomach to knot and twist and attempt to release its contents. I fidgeted with the white paper bag supplied for each passenger, and counted down the minutes until landing. 25 minutes left...20 minutes left...15 minutes (that's halfway!)...14 minutes (less than halfway)... 13 minutes (I hope this flight lands on time)...12 minutes (maybe it lands early)... 11 minutes (I should have stayed on the ground and watched the BBC documentary about the lines)... 10 minutes (I'm never flying again - hey, only a third to go!) and so on. When I got off the plane I involuntarily imitated the pope, kneeling and kissing the ground. I then spent the near couple of hours in my hotel room, letting my intestines unknot. By some miracle my breakfast left my stomach the normal way at the normal time.<br /><br />Seeing the Nasca Lines from the sky definitely was not worth it.Steve McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14821039898589441072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9677459.post-1145615499516902072006-04-08T12:30:00.000+02:002006-04-21T12:31:39.520+02:00Tears of Pain and Joy on the Pan American HighwayYesterday I met Anna from England, one of the most interesting travellers I've ever encountered. She was born in Austria because her parents worked there briefly, she spent five years in Saudi Arabia, is currently living in Colombia, and soon she begins a three-year stint in Ukraine. She once cruised down the Amazon River where her father had his fingertip bitten off by a piranha, recently visited New Zealand (which she loved) and when I met her, she was travelling by train through Peru's Sacred Valley of the Incas, about to walk the ancient Inca Trail through the Andes. I got talking to her when we both started gazing at the chocolate-coloured rapids flowing beside the train. She eloquently told me how she did a white-water rafting expedition on such a river a few days ago. She writes detailed accounts of all her journeys, which she illustrates with drawings of what she sees. She also speaks fluent Spanish. But what is most remarkable about Anna is that she is only 8 years old.<br /> <br />Of course, her adventurous parents accompany her on all these voyages!<br /> <br />Last time I wrote, I was stuck in Ecuador, trying to get to Quito to catch a plane but unable to, due to marauding hordes who were blockading the major roads. The day of my flight, I turned on the television in my hotel room to find that the government had declared a state of emergency and had sent in the army to clear the roads. I went to the bus station with hope, sure I could still make my flight. The bus people told me that a direct bus to Quito would leave at 1pm, just in time for my flight. However when 1pm came around, the roads were still blocked, due to a combination of the army being instructed not to hurt anyone, and the determined protesters' new tactic of throwing dynamite around.<br /> <br />The next morning I joined forces with Victor, a 78-year-old Swiss man, who lives in Ecuador with his child bride, an Ecuadorean woman only 40 years old. Together Victor and I decided we would get to Quito no matter what it took - me to catch my plane, and him to be with his lovesick wife. We got a bus to take us 20 kilometres, before a police blockade cut our progress short. Getting out of the bus, we befriended a couple of Ecuadorean girls for company and protection, and together the four of us walked around the blockade and began walking along the car-less Pan American Highway, through Andean villages, with a background of mountain lakes and extinct volcanoes. Many people were also walking in an attempt to get to Quito for work or study, and in numbers we resembled a refugee group fleeing a war zone. I had to carry my backpack, and as my shoulders became numb with pain, I wish I hadn't been carrying those optional extras, such as 5 novels, a guide book, sleeping bag, mosquito net, and clean underwear. I walked for a painful couple of hours, always going around the protesters' blockades, whose numbers were now dwindling. We hitched a short ride with a police transport truck, then another ride with an empty army transport truck, before reaching the final blockade.<br /> <br />The army was trying to get a convoy of supply vehicles through the final blockade and were using tear gas to clear protesters from the road and the nearby fields. The tear gas was effective, but with a strong wind, the tear gas blew over to us, and I learnt why tear gas is called as such. First my nose developed a burning sensation, soon followed by my mouth. Then the gas got stronger and my eyes also burned and I wept like a baby. It was extremely unpleasant and there was nothing I could do expect keep walking, weeping, and hoping to get to some cleaner air.<br /> <br />Some 15 more minutes of walking, I found myself within range of operating buses. I can't adequately describe the relief I felt when I realised I wouldn't need to walk any more. It was like the time when for hours you've had a desperate need to go to the toilet, but can't, and then finally get the chance to go. Nothing could be sweeter. I almost shed more tears than I did with the tear gas.<br /> <br />Amazingly, despite the setbacks I got to Quito in time for my rescheduled flight to Lima, Peru, arriving only 24 hours late. To cover the 100 kilometres or so, I had taken 2 taxis, 4 buses, hitched 3 rides, and walked for 2 hours.<br /> <br />I've spent the last two weeks in Peru, where I saw a whale in the desert, spotted condors flying over a canyon 3 kilometres deep, and visited a village situated on man-made islands that float around Lake Titicaca. If I get inspired, I'll write a detailed update in the next day or two.Steve McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14821039898589441072noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9677459.post-1145615307832151642006-03-22T12:27:00.000+01:002006-04-21T12:29:31.856+02:00Addicted to ColombiaColombia is addictive. I met many travellers there who intended to pass through quickly and ended up changing their travel plans so that they could spend much longer there. "Come for a week, stay for a month" could be the tourism department's motto. It's got to be one of the most underrated travel locations, possibly my favourite country. I didn't have the luxury to stay for months in Colombia but I everywhere I went I ended up staying longer than expected.<br /> <br />I reluctantly dragged myself away from Bogota, to travel by bus for 10 hours to Medellin, another big Colombian city. For safety's sake, it is recommended to only travel during daylight through Colombia, because if guerillas want to rob or kidnap people, they usually strike at night. But travelling by daylight is better anyway, because from one end of the country to the other all the countryside is spectacular. The entire journey from Bogota to Medellin was through jungle-covered mountains with ravines and rapidly-flowing rivers.<br /> <br />The government in recent years has been trying to ensure that the most important highways are safe, to encourage Colombians to travel again within their own country. The road to Medellin used to be very dangerous, and to make it safe, the last 100 km has soldiers stationed every 200 metres or so. For hours I could always see at least one machine-gun toting soldier in camouflages where the road meets the jungle. At first this freaked me out a bit, until I realised that because of the soldiers it is possibly one of the safest stretches of highway in all of South America.<br /> <br />In Medellin I only intended to stay for a couple of days, but it is such a mellow city in a spectacular natural setting in a valley in the Andes. I stayed until the last possible moment. It is near the equator, but at 1500 metres or so, the altitude-moderated climate is perfect virtually every day of the year. The locals call it the "The City of Everlasting Spring", always warm without being too hot or humid. Colombia's greatest living artist, Fernando Botero (who I had never heard of until getting here), lives in Medellin, and the city is full of his sculptures of fat things. In many of the plazas are his trademark sculptures of fat naked ladies reclining, fat men in suits, or fat conquistodors on fat horses. Really fat, completely obese, like the worst McDonalds' junkies you see in TV shows that like to reveal how fat Americans are. Along with the eternal spring and obese statues was a fantastic night life that kept me out until 4am too many times.<br /> <br />I finally dragged myself off for another 10 hour bus ride through more breathtaking scenery, this time to Cali. The Garden of Eden could have been in Colombia. Everywhere, everything is deep luscious shades of green, the coffee plantations, the sugar fields, the jungle on the mountains. I had intended to spend more time in Cali, the self-proclaimed salsa capital of the world and home to Colombia's best parties. However as I had a flight to catch in neighbouring Ecuador too soon, I could only stay one night, but fortunately it was a Saturday. I met up with some other travellers and went to a nightclub, only intending to stay briefly so I could leave early in the morning. I told myself, "it will not be another 4am morning"...and then I went home at 4:30am. I overslept in the morning, but somehow got to the bus station to continue the journey through... well, yet more inspiring scenery.<br /> <br />I stopped for the night in Popayan, an old Spanish colonial city. Nearby are many coffee plantations, and the owners of the plantations built this city a little higher where the air was cooler. All the buildings in the centre are painted gleaming white, old churches stand on hills, and the Andes provide a nice backdrop. By now I was really tired, from constant travelling and too many nights of short sleep, so I contemplated just resting for a couple of days. Unfortunately I just didn't have time, as I still had about 15 hours of travel ahead of me to reach Quito, Ecuador in time for my flight.<br /> <br />I tried to do the entire 12 to 15 hours of travel in one day. I set the alarm for 6am, ignored it when it went off, got up at 7am, and managed to be at the bus terminal in time for an 8am bus. I drifted in and out of sleep on the bus ride. The bus broke down twice, but I still was on target to reach Quito by midnight. The border crossing with Ecuador took some time, and then I caught another bus onwards. We were soon stopped by the military. As a backpacker who hadn't shaved for a week and who had just come from Colombia, it was no surprise that they searched my bags thoroughly. Naturally there was nothing for them to find. But then the real shock came...<br /> <br />I had been so worried about checking the Colombian news daily that I had ignored all Ecuadorean news. But it turns out that for more than a week, much of Ecuador has been basically shut down by protesting indigeneous people, angry at an impending Free Trade Agreement with the USA. Schools are shut, petrol and food supplies are limited, and the roads in and out of Quito are blockaded with burning tyres and drunk, angry people. I got about 100 kms from Quito and then couldn't go any further. I thought about taking a taxi to the blockades and walking past them. But locals told me that as a tall foreign-looking guy in this land of short Andean people it would be dangerous for me. So here I am now, 2 hours of travel from Quito, but stuck. My plane leaves tomorrow night, and I don't think I will make it. I'm supposed to be flying to Lima, Peru, where my girlfriend is flying from Germany to meet me, so it's a pretty bad situation. Luckily I am stuck in a nice town (whose name I forget immediately anytime I hear it) and I have English language television shows in my hotel room.Steve McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14821039898589441072noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9677459.post-1145615207447858912006-03-09T12:23:00.000+01:002006-04-21T12:26:47.466+02:00Sneaking into a Colombian Army BaseI am in Bogota, the capital of Colombia. A civil war here has been running for 50 years. There's leftist guerillas in the jungle, private armies funded by businessmen, farmers, and drug lords, and the government's army. Add to that the instability caused by the cocaine industry and you get Colombia's well-deserved reputation for violence. Until recently elections and court cases often went in favour of whoever blew up the most buildings and killed the most people. Unsurprisingly there are not many tourists here.<br /><br />This weekend elections are being held for the president, senate, and chamber, and so things are pretty tense. There are soldiers with machine guns and bullet-proof vests just about everywhere. From 6pm tomorrow there will be a 4 day ban on the sale of alcohol, to stop booze-induced political violence.<br /><br />Despite all this, Colombia is much safer for tourists than you would think, as long as you stay out of the guerilla controlled areas in the jungle and listen to local advice. Over the last couple of years things have become far more settled, so much so that the US government website giving advice for travellers states that last year "only" 1 American citizen was kidnapped!<br /><br />I did my research before coming here, and plan to stick only to safe roads and cities. My research turned out not to be very good, because the first road I tried to travel along when entering Colombia was closed, due to a bridge being blown up a few weeks ago. The detour around a small mountain range added many hours to the trip. I've decided to stay put in Bogota until after the election, insteadf of taking risks on the highways.<br /><br />It's a pity Colombia has all these problems because it is a fantastic country. The mountains and coast are beautiful, it feels relaxed (or as relaxed as a country at civil war can be), and people are friendly. The day after I arrived I found myself being shouted (für die Deutsche: "to shout someone" bedeutet einladen) in a cafe by a couple of young Colombians and being invited to hang out at their place. Someone else has invited me to go travelling this weekend to a region known as the coffee zone, where the famous Colombian coffee is grown, although due to the election I won't be going.<br /><br />The highlight so far in Colombia has been a city on the Caribbean coastcalled Cartegena, founded by the Spanish not long after Colombus first came this way. It is situated on an island just off the coast. and it's enormous sea walls built to keep English pirates away from the gold and silver Spain was harvesting are still in place. They surround a city of old colonial buildings with grand churches and theatres and a disused bull-fighting ring. Walking along the sea walls in the evening when a strong sea-breeze is whipping up the waves you can half imagine Spanish sailing ships are likely to appear on the horizon. If you know the Robert de Niro movie The Mission, where he is a Jesuit priest fighting for the rights of Native Americans to have souls, then you've seen this city, because it was used for scenery.<br /><br />Twenty minutes walk away from the colonial centre, on an extension of the island, there is a row of resort-oriented beaches. Some people say Cartegena is the most beautiful city in South America. I haven't seen every city in South America so I don't know if it is true, but it is probably the best I have seen, especially when walking through at night.<br /><br />Colombia doesn't attract your usual travellers. Notable are the people who come here simply to sample as much of the local mind-altering produce as possible, and I am not talking about caffeine. I try to stay away from them as much as possible because you can't have a conversation that makes sense with them. One of them, an idiot from Germany, tried to convince me that the former drug lord, Pablo Escobar was a good man. Pablo Escobar, who was possibly the richest and most violent criminal in history, who ordered the deaths of untold journalists, politicians and judges, as well as other people who didn't see things his way, who blew up a passenger jet in order to kill one of the passengers (who by chance actually wasn't on it: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avianca_Flight_203), who caused Bogota to earn the title of the most violent city on earth during the 1990's, who was once estimated by Forbes magazine to be the 7th richest person in the world by controlling 80% of the world's cocaine market, who can compete with Hitler and Pol Pot as the 20th century's most evil men. The idiot German's argument was because Escobar built a couple of schools and hospitals in his home town.<br /><br />One nicer person I met was Susan, a 66 year old recently retired American day care centre manager. She proudly proclaims that she ran the most liberal day centre in America, talking the children on peace marches. Sounds a bit odd to me, I think most 3 year old don't care about politics unless it involves lots of finger painting and afternoon naps.<br /><br />I also met Juan, an American soldier who finished a tour of duty in Iraq only two weeks ago. He saw a lot of front-line duty, and is understandly somewhat tense at the moment. Hanging out with him challenged some of my ideas about American soldiers, because he was smart and knowledgeable and quite moderate in his views, and witty too. He joined the army as a way to obtain american citizenship. As we walked through Cartegena one night a beggar started pestering us. Juan was born in Central America and speaks fluent Spanish, so he very politely talked to the beggar and said goodbye. The beggar kept following, so Juan spoke much more sternly and told the beggar, "You are not respecting me. I like to be treated with respect. Now leave us alone." The beggar still persisted, and, well, my Spanish is pretty weak but I think what Juan said, with his chest stuck out, and only inches from the beggar's face, was, "I don't want to have to kill any more people, but if you don't leave now I will have no choice." The beggar left _very_ quickly. I chose not to ask Juan any details about the people he has killed.Steve McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14821039898589441072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9677459.post-1144457340334616552006-03-07T02:43:00.000+01:002006-04-08T02:52:07.436+02:00892 Flavours of Venezuelan Ice CreamSpaghetti Bolognaise, Germany, Black Bean, http://www.andes.net/, Titanic, Power Rangers, Jurassic Park, Swiss Cake, Tuna - these are all flavours available in an ice cream shop in Merida, Venezuela. For 15 years the Guinness Book of Records has awarded it as having the most flavours, currently 892 but always increasing. I tried 9 different flavours (although not all on one visit!) and all of them, except Cheese, tasted good. An old Portuguese guy invents these flavours and hobbles around the shop, proudly showing honorary diplomas and photos of him with what I assume are famous Venezuelans who visit his shop.<br /><br />Merida is a touristy town in the Andes, and I've been here for a couple of days. Other than the ice cream shop, the major attraction is the world's longest, highest - and probably most expensive - cable car. It starts in humid heat at 1500 metres and ends up beyond the clouds amongst patchy snow at 4700 metres. Getting up to the top and back again took me four hours. I don't have much faith in Latin American engineering feats, so I was glad to find it was French-built.<br /><br />Before coming to Merida, I visited a large part of Venezuela near Brazil called La Gran Sabana. I looked up Gran in my phrase book - it means "big". And Sabana means "bedsheet". I'm not sure how it earned that name. This big bedsheet is an elevated plain some 1500 metres high, bordering the Brazil's Amazon region. It's mostly scrub land, but punctuated irregularly by isolated table top mountains that are cut off from the surrounding land and have therefore each developed their own species of plants and animals. Plenty of rivers plunge off these table top mountains, creating a smorgasbord of spectacular waterfalls, around which small areas of lush forest abound. The most famous of these waterfalls is Angel Falls, which drops almost 1000 metres, the highest waterfall in the world. I didn't see Angel Falls, because it is only accessible by an expensive plane flight, and the promotional photos I saw of it didn't look very impressive, just a thin stream of water disappearing into spray half way down. But I saw enough waterfalls to satiate my desire for several years.<br /><br />The most interesting waterfall I saw was only some 30 metres high, but with some guidance over the slippery rocks I was able to walk _through_ the curtain of water into a cave that runs behind the waterfall, then after following the cave for a bit, walk back through the curtain in the middle of the river, with the strong current and the force of the falling water trying to knock me off my feet.<br /><br />I'm not sure if overall I like Venezuela. Despite the scenery and the friendly people, some of the cities have a palpable sense of danger, with plenty of petty and not-so-petty crime. Rumour has it that corrupt policemen like to plant cocaine on tourists and then demand a bribe to not arrest them, and hearing about this has caused me think twice before going out at night. Which is a pity, because Venezuela has contributed more Miss World and Miss Universe winners than any other countries, and going out to night clubs is supposed to be a good way to see evidence of future potential winners.<br /><br />And finally, for those of you who often complain about how expensive petrol is...you should definitely consider moving to Venezuela. It's one of the world's biggest producers of oil. At 4 cents a litre for petrol, you can fill up your tank with whatever loose change you have in your pocket. Despite this, the driver who took me and others in his Landcruiser on the Gran Sabana tour _still_ managed to run out of petrol 15 km short of a petrol station. For the sake of some 10 cents of petrol and a bit of forethought, we got stranded on the highway while our driver hitched a ride to the station and back.Steve McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14821039898589441072noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9677459.post-1139052585996160252006-02-04T12:29:00.000+01:002007-07-28T09:30:06.675+02:00The Road to Timbuktu 5: End of the Road700 years ago the king of Timbuktu passed through Cairo and other cities on his way to visit Mecca. With him were 80 camel-loads of gold. Ever since Europeans tried to reach this unknown and forbidden city, expecting a city paved with gold. There were two major problems: no European really knew where the city was, or if it even existed, and the city was banned to non-Muslims, the punishment for unwelcome visitors being death. Things heated up in the early 1800s when a French society offered an enormous cash prize to the first European to get to Timbuktu and back to Europe alive.<br /><br />In 1826 Gordon Laing, a scottish man, disguised himself as a Muslim and after two years of travel through the Sahara, and sporting numerous wounds made it to Timbuktu. However soon after leaving he was hunted down and killed.<br /><br />In 1828 Rene Caillie, a Frenchman, also disguised himself as a Muslim, learnt Arabic, and spent a year travelling alone through West Africa to Timbuktu. He found a poor, rundown and unimportant village, and was so disappointed that he left less than two weeks later to return to France and claim the prize.<br /><br />In 2006, Steve McLeod disguised himself as a grubby backpacker, learnt nothing, and spent a month crossing the Sahara to Timbuktu. He found a drab, dusty, dirty town, inhabited by people who seem to be a cross of Arab and Black people, as well as French package tourists who had flown to Timbuktu and were staying in airconditioned hotels with televisions, and eating Italian meals at European-style restaurants. He stayed two days then returned the way he came.<br /><br />I had been forewarned that Timbuktu was spectacularly unimpressive, and it's true. It used to be an important trade city of 100,000 people, located where the fertile area surrounding the Niger river meets the Sahara, where slaves and gold from West Africa passed through on their way to Asia and Europe. It had one of the most important universities in the Islamic world. But when Europeans started sailing ships around Africa and to India and the Americas, Timbuktu's trade dried up. The mud brick buildings were easily destroyed by the yearly rains and sand storms. Far more interesting today is the voyage there.<br /><br />The last part of my trip to Timbuktu was via an old Landcruiser over dirt roads to the wide Niger river. Here I got on a ferry and travelled a few kilometres upstream across the river, passing fishing villages where the squat, box-like houses are made of mud-bricks, and have to be constantly repaired during the wet season. Utterly poor people living in these villages wear second-hand clothes from America and Europe, usually ripped and dirty, and greet anyone passing through with demands for food, money, pens, or biscuits. After the ferry another 10 kilometres by road took me to Timbuktu. There are plenty of aid organisations helping with food and health in Timbuktu (and all over Mali), but they seem to have created an unhealthy situation where local people assume white people hand out lots of stuff freely to anyone. So as I wandered around Timbuktu, if I dared to stand still for a minute or two, I would soon by surrounded by children and teenagers expecting stuff. It got pretty tiring pretty quickly. This happened even when I walked out of Timbuktu into the sand dunes that surround it on three sights. I don't know where they appeared from - it's like the just spring out of the sand, in their raggedy clothes, ready to annoy me.<br /><br />The main attraction in Timbuktu is the tourist office, where a small man with enormous glasses crouches over a desk and his almost dry inkpad. He gives Timbuktu stamps in the passports of anyone passing through, which ultimately turns out to be the number one reason people give for going there.Steve McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14821039898589441072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9677459.post-1139052533769024412006-01-29T12:28:00.000+01:002007-07-28T09:30:06.675+02:00The Road to Timbuktu 4: Meeting Mali's Ladies of the NightThere are two routes from Nouakchott, Mauritania to Bamako, Mali. The best route follows a good road southwards to Dakar, Senegal, after which a 3 day comfortable train trip eastwards completes the journey. The hard route heads directly eastward by road through the desert for 1000 kms, stopping for some 30 or so police and military checkpoints, each manned by someone asking for a "gift", before turning southwards for 500 kms over unpaved bumpy, sandy roads, where breakdowns are common and the heat is relentless. As I didn't have a visa for Senegal I took the hard route. It was a gruelling 4 days of travel to Bamako, the capital of Mali. Timbuktu is in Mali and all things going well I will be there in a few days.<br /><br />I hitched a ride with a French man who was transporting an old French van to Mali to sell it. An American girl and her Canadian boyfriend also rode in the same van. The driver was born in the Ivory Coast, and he was almost a perfect blend of African and European. He knew how to use the perfect combination of humour, deception, and argument to avoid giving "gifts" at the checkpoints. He helped us negotiate good deals on accommodation and money changing. And despite the hassles, the heat, the breakdowns, and getting the car stuck in sand, he never lost his cool.<br /><br />The four day drive had some fascinating scenery and transitions, which partly made up for the difficult drive. The first two days was through pure desert and the villages were far apart. People were predominantly Moors, Arab-looking desert dwellers. Men wore light blue robes with white scarves wrapped around their head, while women each elegantly wore a single piece of bright cloth, from neck to ankle, and which also covered their hair. They used a loose end of the cloth to hide their mouths when they talked to me. As we turned southwards, the desert gradually turned into Savannah and then light forest. We started seeing black Africans in greater numbers, until by the time we crossed the border into Mali, all the villagers were completely black. Women wore bright patterned dresses with matching material used for a kind of hat. A piece of material wrapped around their back and tied to their chest might carry a sleeping baby like a backpack. Women collecting water from the local well balanced their water container on their heads as they walked easily along the roads.<br /><br />On the first day of the trip we drove until to midnight, so we saw the desert come alive at dusk. Groups of men in the desert all face Mecca and make their sunset prayers. Camels and goats are herded up and driven without warning across the dark road, leading to a lot of roadkill. The villages, composed of small rectangular windowless clay huts, lifeless during the day, have their doors thrown open, animals are cooked on fires by the roadside, adults recline under canvas coverings, and children run around, enjoying the chance to hassle tourists stopping for an evening meal. We stopped for the night nowhere in particular, so I got out my sleeping bag and slept coiled around the van seats with both the doors open and a cool breeze blowing through.<br /><br />Things didn't go well on the third day. The road was so bad we only drove 100kms, getting stuck in sand, often going only at walking pace, over bone crunching roads. We stopped in a town where we heard there was a nice hotel with showers but when we checked it out it was full. It was already getting late, almost 11pm, so we gladly took a bare concrete room with one thin ragged mattress at the next place we tried, to share between three people.<br /><br />If I wasn't so tired I would have noticed earlier that there were a few women wearing particularly revealing clothing hanging out in the courtyard of the "hotel" - and one particularly unfriendly man. If I wasn't so tired I would have wondered why the women greeted us so flirtatiously. If I wasn't so tired I would have been certain what this place was when one woman stopped me as I passed by and said in nonsense English, "You may sleep me?" But when the same woman came in our room, and in French told the French-speaking American that she would sleep with us, four in the room, the penny dropped. With some trouble we explained that, no, we would only sleep three in this room and she must sleep elsewhere. Sure, travel is a time for new experiences, but a foursome with a Malian prostitute is not high on my list of things to do before I die.<br /><br />Hopefully my next entry will be from Timbuktu.Steve McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14821039898589441072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9677459.post-1139052476393802182006-01-24T12:27:00.000+01:002007-07-28T09:30:06.675+02:00The Road to Timbuktu 3: Slovenians with Big PotatoesI'm in Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania. It is a dusty, dirty, poor place where goats wander the streets amongst the cars, everything happens at a slow pace, and the only thing to do is find the quickest way to leave. A border dispute in the 1960's between Mauritania and Senegal was resolved badly, leaving the Mauritanians without a capital so they built this one quickly. It's a dirt-poor (but sand-rich) country that mostly consists of the Sahara. The only foreigners here are aid workers, oil company employees, and a handful of travellers who foolishly thought crossing the Sahara overland would be a good choice for a trip.<br /><br />In the south of Morocco, where I last wrote, I met up with two Slovenian guys who had decided on a whim one cold Slovenian afternoon to do the Sahara crossing, and early the next day took a flight to Morocco and hightailed it southward. I also met a Japanese guy who has travelled by ferry, train and bus from Japan to China, through Mongolia, Russia, Europe, to here. None of us had much idea about how we were going to find our way into and across Mauritania, where to stay, or how much to pay. None of us could speak Arabic or French, the two main languages around here. But the Slovenians told me a Slovenian saying: "The dumbest farmer has the biggest potatoes". I had no idea what that meant, so they explained that it means that somehow things go well for the ones who least deserve it.<br /><br />We set off together and well, we had very big potatoes in an area where things can get very difficult for travellers. A Mauritanian guy gave us a lift in the back of his van on the 8 hour trip to the Mauritanian border and beyond. The van was way beyond being in usable condition and we expected to have a breakdown and get stuck in the desert. But we only had one tyre blow out, the repairs took half an hour and we got across the border 30 minutes before it closed for the night, which could have left us camping in the desert close to nowhere. Once we were across the border safely the driver and his wife were so happy to be back in their poor, hot, desert country they broke out into loud African song and started dancing while we drove past the car wrecks and abandoned pieces of less successful journeys.<br /><br />Early the next day we found a driver with a reasonably good car prepared to take us onwards for the next 500 kms to Nouakchott, where I am now. My potatoes are still big - a couple of hours after arriving yesterday I found a couple of French guys, a Canadian, and an American going in my direction inland along the hopefully well-named "Route of Hope", and leaving in an hour or so from now. It's going to be the toughest part of my journey and will take three or four days until I am in a city worthy of the name, by which time I will be out of the Sahara.<br /><br />The Sahara doesn't often look much like the postcard pictures and the scenery from "The English Patient". It has a surprising amount of variety. Sometimes it has lots of sparse shrubs, 100 kms later it might turn into a flat and barren sea of sand, then perhaps for 200 kms eroded rock formations dominate. Only sometimes do the classic yellow dunes make an appearance. Large herds of camels occasionally appear, or a solitary robed person can be seen walking from nowhere to nowhere. But mostly there is nothing to see, no activity except for a handful of drivers going along the only sealed road that crosses the Sahara from north to south.Steve McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14821039898589441072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9677459.post-1139052422675157782006-01-21T12:26:00.000+01:002007-07-28T09:30:06.676+02:00The Road to Timbuktu 2: The Country That Doesn't ExistSince I last wrote I visited Marrakesh, one of Morocco's major drawcards, where plenty of rich French people come to hibernate for the winter. Like the Medina or Old City in Fez I described last email there is also a Medina in Marrakesh, which has a large central square where in the evening all sorts of entertainment takes place - dancing monkeys and snake charmers, child acrobats somersaulting and landing on each other's shoulders and crazy guys rolling back and forwards, impromptu drama shows and drum bands playing desert music.<br /><br />I stayed in a hotel in Marrakesh modelled on a typical Moroccan home. Amongst the madness and chaos, it was a refuge, and now I see how Moroccans can live in the Medina without having nervous breakdowns. I followed instructions that led me through an archway, down a narrow lane, and around the corner to the entrance, which turns sharply and leads to a beautiful and private courtyard, unable to be seen from outside. The walls and floor are decorated in dark blue and white patterned tiles, the floor is covered in rugs and where there are no rugs, there are low divan-style sofas, covered in cushions. The courtyard is covered and only lets in low lighting, as do ornate but dim lamps. It feels like a harem, although unfortunately it lacked beautiful women massaging my feet and feeding me grapes. Bedrooms on two levels come off the courtyard in every direction, which are also decorated a la Arabian Nights.<br /><br />I left Marrakesh intending to start the long, long journey south through the desert to Mauritania, but due to overbooked buses, I got stuck for two days in a resort town where old Germans, Scandinavians, and Brits come for a week or two of sunshine. Being in such a place after the real Moroccan cities was a bit surreal. As soon as a bus was available heading south I got on it, on an epic sleepless 24 hour bus journey to a place not worth knowing about in the Western Sahara, called Dakhla.<br /><br />I had a two hour wait between buses and got talking to a couple of locals. They asked me where I was from, then made a point of saying they are not Moroccan. They are from Western Sahara. The problem is, there is no such country. It was a Spanish possession until they handed it over in 1970's. But Spain neglected to say whom they were handing it over to. Morocco, Algeria, and Mauritania all claimed it, and a lot of the people actually living there, desert nomads I think, claimed independence. So what's the logical thing to do with a huge chunk of empty desert that people can't agree over? Fill in with landmines, of course. So this is an area where you stick to the road. Fortunately there is no reason to leave the road, because it is just endless repetitive desert. Although there is no official resolution, it is controlled by Morocco. Over the last 500 kilometres I lost count of how many police checkpoints we went through where as the only foreigner on the bus, I had to trundle off, get my passport details recorded, and board again, to the annoyance of the other passengers.<br /><br />Whereas people in the north of Morocco tend to wear robes with pointed hoods that remind me of some costumes from the original Star Wars movie, here some people go for the Lawrence of Arabia look, white-ish robes with white linen scarves coiled around their head then draped around their necks and over their shoulders, with that tough-guy hard defiant stare.<br /><br />All things going well, tomorrow I'll cover the last 350 kms to the Mauritanian border.Steve McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14821039898589441072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9677459.post-1139052342288026412006-01-16T12:23:00.000+01:002007-07-28T09:30:06.676+02:00The Road to Timbuktu 1: Oceans of BloodIt's been a bad week for sheep in Morocco. I'll tell you why in a moment.<br /><br />A couple of years ago while gazing over maps, dreaming of places to visit, I noticed that I could reach Timbuktu from Europe by travelling overland (and over sea), passing through Spain and Morocco. I made a note to myself to actually do the journey someday. Well, now I am on the way.<br /><br />I started from Spain, where I took a ferry past Gibraltar, over the 20-odd kilometres to Africa. From the ferry I could see Europe in one direction and Africa in the other, and I was quite disappointed that both continents looked identical. I don't know what I was expecting...churches and castles on one side, elephants and giraffes on the other?<br /><br />Upon arriving in Morocco I hightailed it down to Fes, one of Morocco's major tourist drawcards. The centre of Fes (and every Moroccan city) is the Medina, the old city, an enormous maze of narrow streets too small for cars, contained within giant walls, where thousands of people - and the occasional animal - crowd and press together, pushing you whatever way. This area, only a couple of kilometres across contains 400,000 people and it seems like every one of them has something to sell. Many women wear hair- or head-coverings, and many men wear brown gowns with pointy hoods. Streets are lined with stalls selling aromatic spices, fresh fruit, dried fruits and nuts, ceramics, carpets, carpets, carpets, sheep, and all sorts of clothing and trinkets you can think of. There are no straight streets, and from the moment I entered through one of the dozen main entrances, I was lost, at the mercy of street urchins to guide me to the nearest gate. There is no way to tell whether going down a crooked lane will lead to a dead end or a major road. I felt like a rat in a giant science experiment, and failing miserably at finding the cheese and the path out.<br /><br />I loitered on a street so narrow I could touch both walls with my outstretched arms, working out whether I had already seen this street, and whether the ceramic shop I was standing outside was different from any of the others I had already seen, when a man tugged at my sleeved, and said in French "Attention, attention". I thought he was yet another person trying to sell me stuff I didn't want, so I ignored him. Suddenly he grabbed me harder and threw me into the shop, just in time to avoid the sorry-looking donkey, loaded with gas bottles, and coming down the street at a mean pace. After that experience I paid more attention to people's warnings.<br /><br />The travel literature likes to say how the medina in Fes is a medieval city, unchanged in centuries. I'm no expert on medieval cities but I am pretty sure they didn't have electricity, internet cafes, bootleg CDs for sale, men sitting inside their shops watching European football on TV, and Wham's greatest hits blasting out of apartments.<br /><br />Plenty of sheep were being sold all around the Medina, wherever the paths were wide enough, because a big Islamic festival was about to happen. For this festival people travel from all over the country to be with their families, and then together the family slaughters a sheep to celebrate...something...I don't know really. The day before the festival there was sheep bleating all day. The next day, a sinister silence... As I have long believed, the family that slaughters together, stays together.<br /><br />During the day of the sheep massacre I travelled to Rabat, the capital of Morocco. When I walked through Rabat's Medina in the afternoon, the gristly remains of the sheep could be seen. Teenage boys were grilling sheeps' heads on improptu fires, in preparation of stewing the heads to make a Moroccan traditional dish. Piles of bloody sheep fleeces were stacked along the street. I had to be careful not to slip on blood.<br /><br />On my stomach's behalf, I soon left the Medina and went down to the ocean. Unfortunately I chose the place where the city's sewerage enters the ocean. Around the sewerage pipe a large area of water was a strange pink, which I guess was from the gallons of sheep's blood. Nearby a brave - or foolish - man was surfing, ignoring the unsanitary conditions.<br /><br />Amazingly the medinas don't smell, and the next day everything was scrubbed clean, all garbage removed, and any trace of sheep and blood had disappeared. Except that the restaurants had lots of sheep dishes on the menu.Steve McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14821039898589441072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9677459.post-1131572946507859912005-10-09T22:45:00.000+02:002005-11-09T22:49:06.513+01:00Balkans: Marble Palaces and Blown Up BuildingsI took a recent trip to what used to be Yugoslavia, and is now five different countries, and could be seven soon, if Montenegro and Kosovo get what they want. Not many of the places I visited are likely to become major tourist attractions too soon - land mines in the countryside and war-destroyed houses in the main streets tend not to be too popular. But there were some real surprises, places that I had never heard of but went to anyway that turned out to be gems.<br /><br />We started inland a bit, in Ljubljana and Zagreb, both typical middle European places, like you might find in Austria or Germany. But then we took a four hour train ride over the mountains, past bombed-out and deserted farmhouses and villages, into the clouds and out again, to arrive on the Adriatic coast, in a city called Split. Suddenly everything had changed, from the dark, drab Art Nouveau buildings in gloomy Zagreb, to Split's dazzling marble in the bright sunshine, more like Italy or Greece or Spain.<br /><br />The main attraction in Split is the retirement home of a Roman emperor, who built a colossal fortified palace, all of marble, surrounded by giant walls, and right on the seashore. After the Roman empire fell apart some invaders turned the palace into a small town, where the corridors became tiny streets of marble, the palace gardens became piazzas, and the rooms were converted into tiny shops and homes. It's still like this today.<br /><br />Further along the coast is Croatia's pride and glory, Dubrovnik. This is a fortified city that was an independent city state for hundreds of years, always withstanding invasion. Living under enlightened leaders while all the rest of Europe was mired in feudalism, even in the 1300's they had a public retirement home, slavery was abolished, torture was forbidden, there were schools and a public health service. Nowadays it has fallen to modern invaders: it's on the itinerary of every Mediterranean cruise ship so its piazzas and streets-cum-staircases are too overcrowded with tourists.<br /><br />We crossed the border into Bosnia and Hercegovina, to a town called Mostar which marks the limit of how far the Turkish Muslims invaded Europe. Today it's a city that's half Christian, half Muslim, so there are mosques and churches everywhere fighting for attention. It had a arched stone bridge connecting to the two sections of town over a deep river, symbolic of the supposed inter-ethnic harmony in the city with the most mixed marriages in the country but unfortunately it got blown up for fun during the wars.<br /><br />It isn't Muslim life as you expect it in Mostar though - we took a quick look at a mosque, and a girl inside offered to give us a tour and tell us about her religion. Dressed conservatively with a headscarf, you're thinking? No way, this girl was ready for a night at the disco. She wore tight clothing - and not much of it at that - as she wandered inside and outside the mosque, which broke a few misconceptions for me. She told me that Mostar is the western-most Islamic city, in both the geographic sense and the cultural sense.<br /><br />There were some things in Mostar that were very depressing. It was home to some of the worst fighting in the Balkan wars in the mid 1990's, wars which, no matter how much I listened and read, I couldn't quite make sense of. Serbians fought a joint Bosnian and Croatian army, then the Bosnians and Croatians went at each other. All sorts of awful stories, like snipers killing old people going about their shopping, and 10 year olds being amongst a crowd that received a grenade or two in their midst. Lots of people died pretty quickly and there wasn't enough cemeteries, so they turned parks and gardens into new cemeteries all over the place. In one cemetery in the centre of town every grave stone was marked with the year of death: 1993. In another, everybody died in 1994.<br /><br />Next stop was Sarajevo, home to the Winter Olympics in the 1980's, and under siege for 3 years in the 1990's. The outer parts of Sarajevo have plenty of big ugly concrete apartment blocks, with the added feature of the occasional missing wall or roof where it was hit with a shell. Most of the inner city has been built and restored, but one notable blotch on the skyline is the totally destroyed parliament building. Somebody told me they are waiting for some aid money before they build it. Sarajevo has a good cosmopolitan feel to it, probably partly due to their being so many aid workers and UN peace keepers in town. It also has a infamous history of violence: here in 1914 the heir to the Austrian empire Archduke Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated by a Serbian hothead anarchist, which ignited World War One.<br /><br />From here the trip went downhill quickly. Our bus broke down in a non-existent, run-down and unpronounceable country called Republika Srpska, turning what promised to be an 8 hour ride in a fume-filled bus with a special technology designed to amplify every bump and pothole severalfold into something much worse. The destination of the bus ride was Belgrade, in Serbia-Montenegro. With the aftermath of the bus ride and the weather - rain came down in torrents the entire time I was there - the word Belgrade now conjures up very dark images for me.<br /><br />We ended the trip in a Macedonian town called Ohrid. It sounded pretty nice in the guidebook, but was better than that. It's a peaceful old town with quiet streets, on a lake with a view to Albania on the other side. It spent time over the years as a Roman city, Byzantine, Turkish, Yugoslavian, and now Macedonian, and there is a little bit of all of this today. It's exactly halfway between nowhere and nowhere, so the only tourists who venture there are local ones, and the occasional idiot who didn't realise that there is a reason why nobody makes the effort to spend their holidays trudging through the more remote parts of the former Yugoslavia. It's got the Mosques-and-Churches-together thing happening, and people around Ohrid didn't get involved in the war so there's no bullet holes and grenade scars in the streets and walls like there were in the other towns we passed through.<br /><br />My Balkan photos are here: <a href="http://flickr.com/photos/smcleod/sets/1120735/">http://flickr.com/photos/smcleod/sets/1120735/</a>Steve McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14821039898589441072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9677459.post-1131572684327242562005-08-30T22:36:00.000+02:002005-11-09T22:44:44.340+01:00The Danube TrailEven before I came to Europe a couple of years ago, I had planned to do a bit of long-distance cycling while I was here. I finally got around to doing all the preparation such a trip needs, and for 9 days I rode my bicycle along the Danube river, starting at its alleged source somewhere in the Black Forest, and ending up in Austria. I slept (almost) every night in a tent. I almost had to cancel the trip just after I started. I had got myself a good bike, and shoved a tent, a sleeping bag, and a couple of changes of clothes on the back. Less than 1 kilometre into the trip the back of my bike fell apart, strewing bits of luggage and nuts, bolts,and screws all over the street. Luckily the local bike shop did a good job of fixing it quickly, and the next morning I started again.<br /><br />The Danube bike path is supposed to be one of the best bike rides in Europe, and even better, it's mostly pretty flat. I rode through Bavaria, and it seemed that every few kilometres there was an old castle, cathedral, medieval village, or memorial on the river bank. I even saw people walking down the street wearing lederhosen (the German leather trousers), and some Julie Andrews-style dresses. It turned out that in the nearby town there was a sort of mini-Octoberfest going on. Well I say mini, but that's a relative term. I checked it out in the evening, and it was an enormous weeklong festival with thousands of people, plenty of beer drinking, carnival rides, and German oompah bands. And Australians. It seems wherever you go in the world, you'll run into Australians. I heard this unmistakable Aussie twang amongst all the German, tracked down the source, and got talking to an older guy from country Victoria who was being dragged around little-known parts of Germany by a German woman.<br /><br />It was easy just to ride and ride and ride until I had had enough for the day, then find a nearby camping ground. The biggest problem was with the Bavarian food - not so bad if you like schnitzel, but for a vegetarian it was pretty rough. One restaurant I went to had about 20 different types of schnitzel on the menu, and nothing else. I asked if they had ANYTHING without meat in it, and they brought me out a couple of lettuce leaves, with some tomatoes and radishes. Not exactly the energy food you need for a full day's biking. After that I stuck to pizzerias.<br /><br />Photos are here: <a href="http://flickr.com/photos/smcleod/sets/820932/"> http://flickr.com/photos/smcleod/sets/820932/</a>Steve McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14821039898589441072noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9677459.post-1113063094477401352005-04-09T18:09:00.000+02:002005-04-09T18:11:34.480+02:00Japanese DazeI'm back in Germany after enjoying a week in Japan as the last leg of my journey.<br /><br />I spent the first couple of days in Japan bewildered and confused. I was lost amongst Tokyo's 50 million inhabitants, with their complex Japanese etiquette, the indecipherable Japanese writing, and the underground railway to navigate which, with 450 stations, must surely be the world's biggest underground railway. These all conspired against me, making me always look perplexed and not really sure where I was going or what I was doing. Luckily Japanese people tend to be extremely polite and helpful. Unluckily Japanese people tend to speak bad English or no English whatsoever so their polite helpfulness was often less than useful.<br /><br />Things started badly. Here are detailed instructions for how not to begin a Japanese holiday - as I learnt from bitter experience:<br /><ol> <li>Arrive at Tokyo's airport on a Saturday evening, without Japanese money, a guidebook or any accommodation booked.</li> <li>Wander around the airport looking for an ATM only to discover that Japanese ATM's typically don't except foreign cards.</li> <li>After finally finding a special ATM for foreigners, wander around the airport again, this time looking for a bookstore that sells Japan guidebooks</li> <li>Buy an overpriced guidebook, open to the Tokyo accommodation section and read: "Flying into Tokyo, particularly at night, without accommodation lined up can be nightmarish.</li> <li>Proceed to call every bugdet hotel listed in the guidebook to discover that the guidebook's comment was an understatement.</li> <li>While contemplating sleeping overnight in the airport, stumble upon the Tourist Information desk just as the clerk is locking up for the night.</li> <li>Plead to the Tourist Information clerk to give some information about finding a hotel before she leaves.</li> <li>Gratefully accept list of hotels from clerk, return to telephone, make seven more calls to finally find a hotel that has a spare room.</li> <li>Begin stage 2 of the nightmare: the 2 hour late night journey on a total of 3 trains to the hotel.</li> </ol><br />Ah, but it was all good fun, this is what independent travel is all about - being unprepared and winging it as you go. It almost always works out, and when it doesn't you are left with a good story to tell.<br /><br />When I got to my hotel and checked in, I was dying to have a quick bite to eat then sleep like I had never slept before. I opened the door to my room and thought I had gone to the wrong room. It looked like a small storeroom without a bed and with a pile of blankets on the floor. Then I realised, that the room WAS the bed. The floor was covered with a couple of Japanese mats, and I just had to roll out the blankets and sleep directly on them.<br /><br />Next stop was the local convenience store. These stores, such as 7-11's and Circle K's, are on every corner in Japan. There is one convenience store for every 400 inhabitants and in my opinion that's the rate they should be found at everywhere around the world. They are so prevalent that a friend of mine living in Japan gave me directions to her apartment according to convenience stores. "Go past the Family Mart, walk one block further to the 7-11, then turn right at the Circle K". Amongst all the junk food are Japanese novelties such as heated cans of ultra-sweet coffee and tasty pre-prepared meals that you simply take home, throw in the microwave for a couple of minutes, and eat. The problem was, the meals were all labelled only in Japanese so I had little idea what contents were in most of them. For the adventurous that wouldn't be a problem, but as a vegetarian, I spent 15 minutes staring at the various foodstuffs, almost weeping with frustrated hunger, before concluding that for the duration of my Japanese visit I was going to have to shelve the vegetarian thing and act like a normal human being instead.<br /><br />After a couple of days, I used the bullet train to escape from Tokyo to a slightly less hectic part of Japan - the cities of Osaka and Kyoto. I have a friend living in each of these cities and with their guiding and translating I snapped out of my Japanese daze. Aidan from Australia lives in Osaka where - with the help of hand puppets - he teaches Japanese people how to speak English. Fortunately he left the hand puppet at home when we went out in Osaka. Osaka is a good example of one common image of Japan - the city at night ablaze with neon signs in every street, from ground level to the seventh floor. Toei from Thailand is studying in Kyoto, which offers a very different but equally common image of Japan - golden pagodas, elegant gardens, and shrines and temples. It is also home to Monkey Mountain where, in contrast to normal zoos, the humans are put in cages while the monkeys on the outside look through the bars.<br /><br />I experienced a couple of personal firsts in Japan: high-tech toilet seats and singing karaoke. When in Rome... Japan is the land of the high-tech, and amongst all their fancy gadgets, the toilet seats impressed me the most. The high-tech toilet seat came to my sudden attention when I sat down and discovered that the seat was heated. Next to the seat was a complicated console with 6 buttons and 3 dials, all labelled only in Japanese except one button that read "Powerful Deodorizer". I was curious to find out just how much power the deodorizer had so I start pressing buttons and turning dials, but nothing seemed to happen. The wisest move of mine in all of Japan was to stop playing with the console until I was standing up, next to, but not in front of the toilet. I was determined to work out how to make this contraption do something and so I kept pushing buttons in various combinations when suddenly I got it. A thin pipe rose out of the toilet and started sending a stream of water 2 metres in the air, saturating the door, but luckily not me. As the floor started flooding I found the magic button to stop the impromptu water fountain and retract the pipe. I left the toilet as quickly and quietly as I could, acting as if the lake on the bathroom had nothing to do with me.<br /><br />The less said about my karaoke experience the better. But I guess I have to say at least something now... Karaoke in Japan, as far as I can tell, usually takes place in private booths designed only for a small group of people, which you pay for by the half-hour. A friend and I holed up in one of these booths, with our own karaoke machine and about 20 billion songs to choose from. The booths have clear glass windows in the door, which I am told is to stop people using the private booths for other private non-karaoke activities. Before coming to Japan I did have a life-long resolution never to take part in karaoke. I have changed it now, to never do karaoke outside of Japan. Believe me, it is for the sake of my personal dignity and the sake of the people within earshot.<br /><br />I'm keen to get back to Japan sometime soon. Almost everything I did and saw in Japan was somehow strange or exotic. I could have written pages and pages for each day I was there. Unfortunately reality has hit me again, the travelling is over for now, and as of Monday I join the world of wage-slaves again.Steve McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14821039898589441072noreply@blogger.com3