mr tony's adventures beyond the ultraworld

Problems on re-entry

2008-05-10T10:56:00.003+01:00

Is this it?

The end?

Did I adventure beyond the ultraworld?

Did I ever leave?

Ok, the answers are yes. No stolen credit cards, lost passports, hostage videos, crashes, arrests, bribes or druggings - but I did go round the world and I did make it back in one piece. I must've been doing something wrong.

And five days after touching down there's not been too many problems on re-entry. Save for a bit of jetlag and a couple of habits that I need to get back into (like wearing jeans, and clean underwear, and t-shirts that have been washed in a machine rather than with flaky soap in a guesthouse sink) things have been easy. And so my thoughts turn back to the ultraworld.

In some ways it doesn't feel like I ever left. Everything is more or less still where it was - my things, the South Downs, the government, the Albion. Just a few bits and pieces scattered around to remind me that it wasn't a dream. A painting from Australia, a poster of the Thai King, a hammock, some photos, a new Prime Minister, a new Boris Johnson... Or maybe it was a dream. Maybe I've not woken up.

I won't bore you with my profound thoughts on my last twelve months. Mainly cos I can't think of any. In 365 days I managed to cross 31 borders, sleep in 215 different places and burn over eight tonnes of carbon dioxide. And what do I have to show for it? A bit less hair, a broken finger, some photos, four filled journals and this blog.

In fact I've never re-read or proof read this site until today. I feel like going back and editing it but I guess that wouldn't be the point. So in the absence of any final thoughts, here's a few of the highlights from Mr Tony's Adventures. Ok it's just some links, but better than nothing. Probably. These were a few of my favourite things:

Big things in the US of A
Bear advice in Canada
Being churlish in Cuba (I love it now...)
Elections Guatemala style
Making new friends in Nicaragua
Tall tales
Finding echoes of Bognor down under
And a month in south east asia... Malaysia decides, scary buddhists, scooters and dictators...

One year in half a dozen easy links. Thanks for reading.

The Money Shot

2008-05-03T12:10:00.002+01:00

And it was worth it. A 35km walk from a tiny village called Govindghat up to the Valley of Flowers (3,000m above the sea) and back again. Apparently from July the snow-filled valley that you can see is full of flowers. I take their word for it.

So I made it to the Himalayas and, after a total of 32 hours on buses and in jeeps from Punjab, I'm feeling quite smug. I'm not much looking forward to the next 17 hours back to Delhi though. Ho hum.

Some advice

2008-04-30T07:54:00.002+01:00

If anyone asks if you've been here before, say "yes, many times". If they ask where you're from, say China.

It was good advice, from an eccentric German that I'd met in Varanasi a few weeks ago. In the last thirty years he'd been pretty much everywhere - to Macchu Pichu when you could get in for free, to Angkor Wat while the French were still excavating it, and to India, many times.

I was feeling pretty low, with the dicky tummy and the relentless hassle from touts. Twice in Varanasi I was literally chased down the streets by crazy people. But his advice worked - they only ask where you're from to work out how much money you've got (saying the UK or England or Britain is always met with a sage "ahh, rich country"), and ask if you've been here before to work out if you're a soft target. I don't usually say China. It seems a bit rude. I say New Zealand, which sounds pretty poor.

Needless to say I rarely tell people I'm a civil servant. They're held in high esteem here. Which is unusual cos they mostly seem to sit around making my life difficult. So I say I'm a student, or a spy.

Anyway I didn't have much cause to lie in Punjab cos most people seemed to have better cameras, clothes and phones than me. But back on the road the occasional untruth (or mis-remembering, as Clinton would have it) has come in handy. So in Corbett Tiger Reserve, about ten hours by ramshackle buses from Chandigarh, my New Zealand student who's been here many times got a half-day safari for about ten quid. Didn't see any tigers but who cares. I saw some indistinct footprints and some elephant poo.

And from there I finally made it up into the mountains - firstly to a hill station that could've been Scotland (right down to the funny smell), and now onto a mountain village where Ghandi hung out. I'm staying in a small place that probably used to be owned by a hobbit. But it's ok, the New Zealand student who's been here many times got a small discount.

Apparently I'm in the foothills of the Himalayas too. But to be honest I can't see fuck-all. A combination of forest fires and heat haze. Just 25 miles from me is a range of peaks reaching 7,800 metres, but all that I can see is a fine, grey soup. It's a bit like standing on the south downs and not being able to see the Isle of Wight (if it was straight in front of you and about 6,000 metres taller).

So tomorrow I'm off again. My last few days of restfully watching the mountains have been replaced by a mad dash to get closer to the buggers. Which cos of the mountain roads will mean ten hours by bus and jeep.

Wish me luck.

It lives inside me

2008-04-25T12:06:00.005+01:00

A week passes and I'm still not up in the mountains. I thought I was better. In fact I was so sure, I decided to make one last attempt at sight-seeing northern India. First up was Agra and the Taj Mahal (my camera broke), then Jaipur (crazy hot, with palaces and things) and then Bikaner (even hotter with extra camels - I was now in the Great Thar Desert, which sounds exciting).

Trouble is that I wasn't much better at all. So when I finally made it to relative civilisation in Chandigarh (India's only 'new town' - it's as if the Jetsons moved to Milton Keynes) I decided to visit a doctor. His verdict was amoebic gastroentiritis. Which sounds explosive. The poor amoeba and its family are dead now, but they had a good innings. And I'm reacquainting myself with regular bowel movements. Which is far better than acquanting myself with the toilets on Indian night trains.

Chandigarh is nice enough. Tons of open space and not a cow to be seen, but with a rigid geometry that borders on the fanatical. Its creator, Le Corbusier, was apparently a genius and is now lauded on the Swiss 10 Franc note. But I think he was surely a nut. As he put it,

"The curve is ruinous, difficult and dangerous, it is a paralysing thing. The straight line enters into all human history, into all human aim, into every human act."

Ok... He also named the new parliament building "The Hyperbolic-Paraboloid Dome of Assembly" and modelled it on a power station chimney that he saw in Hyderabad.

The main reason that I'm here though, is to watch some cricket. India has been caught by the Twenty-20 bug and most of the world's best are here to pocket Indians' hard-earned rupees. So I'm going to do my bit for poor cricketers and head for the Kings Select XI Punjab versus Mumbai Indians tonight. Very exciting. Maybe the most exciting thing to happen in my twelve months.

I was beginning to wonder what I was doing in India. But now I know - I'm here to watch the Little Wizard, Sachin Tendulkar. If he can just get himself fit...

Mr Tony, defeated

2008-04-18T11:34:00.002+01:00

My train was cancelled by the Naxalites. It sounded like a cross between "leaves on the line" and Star Trek, but was apparently because of a low-level guerilla war being waged in Bihar state, India. It was a bad start to a pretty miserable few days. Luckily though, they had put on another train that would leave at the same time and go to the same destinations. I didn't ask them in what sense, then, my train had been "cancelled". There didn't seem much point - that's just how things work here.

Anyway I got on to my next stop, Varanasi, on time. Apparently Varanasi is the holiest city in Hinduism. But it wasn't what I expected - mostly just cows shitting in the streets, and me being followed around by touts, salesmen, boat drivers and drug dealers. Then I spent the next 36 hours in bed, spectacularly ill. It was now 40 degrees outside, 35 degrees in my room, and about 100 degrees in my pounding, spinning head.

So for only the second time this year (the first being when I got man flu in Santiago, Chile) I thought I'd rather be at home. There's no better place when your ill.

I've bucked out of that now, though. Today I started eating again and tonight I head for Agra, to endure the tourist madness of the Taj Mahal. But in one way I'm defeated. Indian touts and the weather have beaten me. I planned to spend most of my final few weeks on a sightseeing circuit of Rajastan and Punjab, but my new plan is to head for the hills. Find somewhere where I can put my feet up, walk a bit, drink tea and relax.

Yep, I'm pretty glad that I've lost.

Black Hole/ On the trail of Lord Buddha

2008-04-14T12:20:00.006+01:00

Um. I can't decide whether to write about Buddha or Calcutta. I suppose that I should say something about Calcutta first. It's huge. Until Friday, London was the busiest city that I have ever visited (narrowly beating Lagos, Nigeria). But Calcutta trumps both. I've never seen so many people in all my life. It's crazy. It's like every minute of every day is the Strand at lunchtime. But instead of suits rushing to and from Pret a Manger, it's rickshaws being pulled on foot, hustlers, beggars, shoeshines, hawkers, barbers...

I'd not really thought much of going to Calcutta. I'd even forgotten the "of Calcutta" bit of Mother Teresa. To be honest it was just the cheapest way to get from Bangkok to India. A few people had told me that it'd be depressing, or intimidating, or scary, or heart-rending. The worst introduction to India. But apart from a few scrapes (like wandering into a slum and then being followed by a few hoodlums - I was saved by a chap called Mohammad Akhbar, who kindly offered to walked me to his mosque) I found it ok. I guess that the Strand and Nigeria stood me in good stead. As did Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Nicaragua...

So from Calcutta I started my hunt for Lord Buddha. It hadn't crossed my mind to go hunting for a 2,600 year old deity until a chance encounter at the national museum in Singapore. There a special exhibition told me all about Nalanda, a sixth-century Buddhist university (at one time the biggest in the world) in northern India. That led me on to Bodhgaya, the place where Buddha became Buddha, attaining enlightenment under a nearby Bodhi tree, and a convenient six hours by train from Calcutta. Which is where I find myself today.

Things have changed a lot since Buddha's time. This is now the poorest state in India - all dust roads and beggars and (again) huge families - and not really the place for a Buddhist family holiday. But nonetheless, the international Buddhist community has done their very best to make you feel at home. The city is full of national temples - from Japan, China, Thailand, Vietnam, Tibet, Bhutan. Mostly Tibetan though, as Bodhgaya doubles up as the winter (November to March) retreat for sun-seeking Tibetans. Not so many are around this month unfortunately - with temperatures nudging 40 I can't blame them.

Sadly my hunt for Buddha ends here. I had planned to visit Nalanda itself, but (as I'm finding) as with all travel in India it's not straightforward. So tomorrow I move on, with a train at stupid o'clock to a place called Varanasi. Apparently it's that town where they cremate people next to the Ganges then go for a swim. Apparently here the Ganges is technically septic, too (it has no dissolved oxygen and therefore virtually no life). Best stay out of the water.

Anyway India is proving good fun. It's a land of cricket, curry and tea so I feel almost at home. Apart from the incredible heat, obviously. And the dust, and the millions of people, and the squat toilets and cold showers. So not much like home at all then...

Goodnight Moses

2008-04-07T12:13:00.002+01:00

I see Charlton Heston is dead. Maybe now we can take the gun from his cold, dead, hands. As he so memorably put it after the Columbine massacre.

Plenty of guns here in Cambodia too, although you don't see them. And they don't justify them with an anachronistic read of something written 250 years ago - more to do with all the wars and things. It's hard to imagine that peace broke out less than twenty years ago and that the UN only handed over the reins in 1993. Unlike Laos and Vietnam (but a lot like Thailand) Cambodia is now a fully functioning, nepotistic, corrupt democracy. In Phnom Penh you can see the new elite, the untouchables, with their minders and cars without number plates.

So far, so Bangkok (for more on where Thailand's gone then check this out - I was on a bus on the same street a few weeks ago....)

And like Thailand ten years ago, it's a land where tourists can do anything. (Including, apparently, machine-gunning cows - though I must be staying in the wrong hostels as I've not seen this yet.)

But if you look past the bad bits, or just choose not to look at them, then Cambodia's a pretty amazing place. Incredible ruins, lively cities, genuine people, great food. I've spent three days at the Angkor temples and after Latin America was determined not to like them. But they're incredible - like nothing else that I've ever seen. Kind of Transformers meets brick spaceships. Today I spent ten hours on a boat down a muddy river and enjoyed all but hours nine and ten.

So it'll be a shame to leave in a few days. But I have to. I now have less than one month to go on my little jolly and so it's time to get on to my last stop, India. All I need now is a visa...

Comrade Tony

2008-03-26T09:50:00.004Z

Well nearly two weeks later and Mr Tony Writes Again. I've spent the last eight days in the People's Democratic Republic of Laos - my second "people's" dictatorship, after Cuba, and like Cuba it's not a place that puts the internet near the top of its priorities. Damn those Marxists and their modems. So I've waited till now, the Kingdom of Cambodia, before writing.

The republic of the people was a pretty special place. After a month in Thailand I was quite happy to leave, and so crossed the Mekong in the far north to a dirt-poor little village surviving on tourists like me. Spent the next two days floating down the same river to Luang Prabang, a beautiful World Heritage city of French colonial grandeur and extravagant Buddhist architecture, before making my way to Vientiane - probably the most chilled out, liveable capital city that I've ever been to.

But the incredible thing about the place wasn't the scenery or the history or the culture. I think Thailand's probably got more of all of those. It was the people. I'm a jaded old cynic these days, but I couldn't get over how friendly the people were. And this is a one-party state, where if you criticise the government you go to jail, there's a low-level civil war going on across the north of the country, and most rural people (ie most everyone) live on less than $2 a day. If I was them I'd hate tourists, particularly ones who spend most of their time getting drunk, taking magic mushrooms and watching bootleg DVDs in bamboo-neon bars (which covers most all of the tourists). Instead, everyone is really, really nice. The nicest country that I have ever been to.

Maybe the government/ party puts them up to it.

Pretty odd communists too. Shell, that Anglo-Dutch paragon of uber-capitalism, runs most of the filling stations and proudly flys the hammer and sickle; army apparatchiks drive round in flash cars in the capital; healthcare and tertiary education are effectively privatised. But I still had some qualms about travelling there; unlike a few people I met, who (bizarrely) have "boycotted" going to the US but apparently have no problems travelling in a country with one of the worst human rights records in the world. So at least I'm not a hypocrite, eh.

Anyway I have to dash. Next time I'll try to write something more interesting. But just before I go, if you ever wondered what Thai boxing looks like, the show for the tourists is a little bit like this.

(Meanwhile, I see that this blogging business is getting more and more problematic. Maybe I should "start a debate" too...)

Scoot

2008-03-22T15:02:00.004Z

"I'm sorry. I want your money. But you must protect the body." She was quite insistent.

Then she added, "But you can have a bicylce for a dollar. Good exercise."

This wasn't what I'd expected. All around me, farang (foreigners) have been whizzing around on mopeds with little regard for their or others' enlightenment. A wobble and a spin away from reincarnation. But the woman in the shop wouldn't let me hire one. All because I told the truth and said that I'd never ridden a moped before.

"But there's lots of traffic." [You should see Camberwell, I thought.] I explained again that I wanted to go for a little scoot up to Doi Suthep, about 16km away from, and 800 metres above, Chiang Mai. Even if it wasn't 36 degrees I still wouldn't cycle it. But this lady wasn't for turning.

I'd have to change my plans.

But then I found this little gem online, and hatched a simple plan. Lie. So I found a different shop and I was off - a fun little day out in the cool highlands, round a couple of temples, and then down into a little tribal village. I think it must've been a tribal village, cos there were busloads of tourists getting in and out of their air-conditioned havens, taking photos of people with funny hats.

Riding a moped's good fun actually. I think I'm hooked. My mum will be so happy.

And it's really easy too. Wikianswers got it right, here:

Question - How do you drive a moped?
Answer - Get on it.

Reasons to be cheerful

2008-03-20T16:09:00.004Z

There are a lot of monks. They smoke, they listen to i-pods, they text each other, they hang around in groups, shaven headed, wearing the same gang colours, some even have tattoos. In fact I'm afraid of Thai monks. I worry that one day I'll turn round and see eight of them chasing me, in some horrific twist of Dom Joly's Trigger Happy TV. Nirvana'd to death by a mob of enlightened skinheads.

I never thought that I'd be scared of Buddhists. After all I've lived with a life-size buddha (and several smaller ones) for over ten years now. I'm sure they're mostly harmless, but I can't help thinking that it points to a deeper malaise. Thailand's a buddhist country. It calls itself the land of smiles. The tourist police's motto is "Serving and protecting with a smile". You think it'd practice some loving kindness.

So I was a bit surprised to learn that the Thai prime minister visited Myanmar (Burma) the other day and said that he "respected" the leadership there - because he's met the generals, and found out that they meditate.

Well that's alright then. Maybe it's not that hard for practicing buddhists to also be genocidal dictators. After all, if you believe that all existence is suffering, and all suffering is caused by ignorance, then what odds if you kill a few illiterate farmers?

I'm probably being a bit naive though. I expect that a buddhist travelling in the west would be amazed that christian countries could fetishise war, or ignore the poor, or vilify immigrants for that matter (that's the problem with Samaritans - coming over here, taking our jobs...)

But I probably need to be careful what I say. Apparently the "Civil Serf" blogger was from DWP. Hope they don't close down Mr Tony's Adventures too...

Love you long time

2008-03-16T16:05:00.003Z

So I've landed on Planet Bangkok, finger still attached, and managed to negotiate the local buses to my new pad. Like the old man that I am I've ended up about 10km from the action of the Khao San Road, but mainly cos tomorrow I go to the Indian Embassy - just round the corner - and try to get a visa to visit their fine country. It'll cost me about $100 and take five days. I think I might just go to Nepal instead.

Even though I'm on the other side of town, there's still plenty of space for the ubiquitous Thai massage joint. I think that the neon-lit, dingy places here may be a bit different to the open-air, palm-fringed ones on the southern islands. Only one way to find out, I suppose.

Sad to leave the islands though. Very very touristy, maybe the most touristy place that I've ever been in my life. Whole islands that weren't even inhabited twenty years ago and now only exist as stops on the (mostly Swedish) tourist trail. Of course I can't really cast the first stone, in fact I quite like tourists. But down south it's pretty easy to forget that you're in a foreign country, let alone one where most people have to do things like queue up to by tickets for a bus, or speak Thai.

It reminds me a bit of Cuba - where you're (voluntarily) insulated from the real world and you almost believe that everything works really well, cos everything works really well if you're a tourist. Of course the difference is that in Cuba the people are really moody (so would I be) whereas here they're mostly really sound. Except for whoever nicked my flip-flops the other day. And of course here they're living a corporate capitalist dream, whereas in Cuba they enjoy the corporate socialist one.

But anyway. I am sad to leave the islands. Beautiful places and maybe the last beach/ snorkelling action for a few years. Also the best place to watch English-language movies, with subtitles that have been translated back into English via Thai. My favourite was the new Rambo movie, where the line "I've seen some shit but I've never seen this" became

"Collapse puply mother, collapse here freely"

PS. I wasn't quite right about Malaysia, but almost...

Malaysia decides...

2008-03-07T04:38:00.003Z

Popped through Malaysia last week, where it's election time in the former British colony. As usual I was naively surprised at how democracy (often) works in the developing world.

The government party, Barisan Nasional, has wasted no time in draping every public building with their flags, while officials from museum workers to policemen walk round with little blue Barisan stickers. On the ferry from Penang, a beautiful little island and former base of the East India Company, I picked up a copy of The Star, Malaysia's leading English language paper. Headlines from the first eighteen pages included:

Four years of success - [President] Abdullah talks of achievement-filled first term in office

Showing their gratitude - Tanjung Piai folk travel in huge numbers to support Ong

Better years ahead for Penang - [government party] Barisan wants to value add to achievements

Page 18 featured the first story on the opposition, "Disaster if Anwar is PM". The next one, on page 20, alleges the opposition had cloned 118,000 voter registrations.

Malaysia maybe wasn't the most exciting destination, but the history in Penang and Malacca was incredible, tangible, and the diversity across the west coast more pronounced than maybe anywhere in the world. Chinese, Malay, Indian, European; Buddhist, Tao, Hindu, Muslim, Christian; all sharing the same place, worshipping freely and just getting on with their lives. No talk of cricket tests here.

But then, I don't speak Malaysian... I expect that the opposition will win the election, or Barisan will rig it, and everything will kick off...

Thailand couldn't be more different. Well I suppose it could, it could be pebble beaches and grey skies. But it's very different. My plans for rock climbing and base jumping have been scuppered by my dislocating (then relocating) a finger after slipping on a very unspectacular rock. I now have a little splint and wear a white glove when I swim. Like a backpacking Michael Jackson.

Nice beaches though, and compared with collapsing my lung in London or getting MRSA in Wales, I couldn't be in a better place to sit around and take painkillers.

Bye for now.

Lucky Number Seven

2008-02-29T14:42:00.003Z

So I've touched down in Singapore, and with it me and my trusty rucksack have arrived in continent number seven. Here it is near a stream in New Zealand, early in continent six.

Continent number seven has come significantly later than continent number one, Europe, which I arrived in some twenty-nine years ago. Now I just need to swim in every ocean (I'm missing the Pacific) and after that I guess it's tectonic plates (here are the rules - flying over them doesn't count, sailing over them does; I think I'm missing six).

Singapore isn't exactly the jewel in the Asian crown and I'm having to be very careful not to chew gum, jay walk or eat on the subway. The heroin smuggling I'm less worried about. Apparently bungy jumping was illegal here until a few years ago, but I don't imagine they had many illegal bungy jumps before then.

My plan was to spend three days here before flying to Bangkok but I forgot to figure in the extra leap year day. I think four days here could drive me insane, so I've decided to leave tomorrow by bus and to head for Malaysia. The only things I know about Malaysia is that there's a big tower in Kuala Lumpur and that there are Orang Utans in Borneo.

I am determined to see at least one of these phenomena.

Down Under

2008-02-24T13:28:00.009Z

It's more than just the title of a Men at Work song.

My time down under has pretty much come to an end, but thankfully I managed to visit at least one area used in the filming of Crocodile Dundee - the beautiful Kakadu National Park. I also saw plenty of crocodiles, like this bad boy here:

I've enjoyed my time in Australia. It's a big place, obviously, but with just 20 million people it can feel pretty provincial. And with mostly all of them living near the coast I keep being reminded of Bognor Regis, just with bronze surfers, yellow sand and a hotter sun. For example, one of the best pieces of real estate on Bondi Beach houses the Australian version of the British Legion. On the stunning Byron Bay, half the beach was smoking pot while the other half was having some kind of swimming competition. While Melbourne must be the best preserved Victorian city in the world.

This apparent provincialism extends to Australian politics too. The level of political debate here is really low - at about the level of "does my honourable friend agree that he is a bastard". As an Australian that I asked about this put it, you get what you deserve - people here respond to the lowest common denominator (usually immigration scare stories, aboriginal stereotypes, and people not doing their "fair share") and so politicians push those buttons. But I think it goes deeper than that - a lot of politicians here are corrupt hypocrites, and the ones that aren't are just hypocrites. Like the new Premier Kevin Rudd, who was elected on a tide of apathy and cautious optimism. On his first day he ratified the Kyoto Protocol, then the following week it chose an SUV as his official car.

People here despair, grumble and then forget about it. Maybe this bothers me cos it reminds me so much of home...

But there are some positives, like the recent apology to the "stolen generation" of aboriginal kids who were relocated to foster parents and boarding schools. This was dismissed as a largely symbolic gesture by some, but it wasn't symbolic to the many victims who are still alive (the policy only officially ended a generation ago) and on the day it united white and black Australia. Proof perhaps that Australians might be ready to face up to their past. Or at least the more palatable bits.

Anyway. The country itself, of course, is absolutely beautiful. I came expecting golden beaches and red desert but I've spent the last month gawking at mountains, rainforest, limestone cliffs, tropical wetlands, sandstone gorges, dried salt pans... And I've still done bugger all of the things that I wanted to.

And to be honest the people aren't bad either. How can you dislike a people who've come up with place names like Lake Disappointment, Cape Catastrophe, Misery Beach, and Mount Nameless. Some people say that (white) Australia's monocultural, but I've counted at least three. Sure there's the suburbanites who live near the coast (about 90%), but there are also crazy people in the outback and crazy people in the tropics. These last two groups meet in the Northern Territory - Australia's "1%" with just 200,000 people in an area more than twice the size of France. I think that most people here are escaping from something (or someone - which would explain all the facial hair). But they do have a great sense of humour. Like these two gems:

Why did the snake cross the road?
Same reason the chicken did.

How do you know if you're eating kangaroo?
Cos it tastes like wallaby.

Ithankyou!

Mr Tony goes Troppo

2008-02-19T15:50:00.002Z

The forecast said "tropical thunderstorms" so I asked to sit the near the front of the plane (close to the exits eh) and by the window (for a better view). I was expecting Airplane. So when we came in over Darwin in a bit of foggy drizzle I was a little disappointed. Turns out I'd missed it. Just a few hours earlier and I could've been swimming into town.

So far I've managed to miss most of the big things in Oz - Ayers Rock, the Great Barrier Reef, the Whitsunday Islands, the pub from Crocodile Dundee. In fact I've hardly done the tourist thing at all. Apart from the Gold Coast (where Bognor meets Benidorm), which I've overdone - Laz and Shez from back home have moved there, and I've been having a great time these last few weeks, broken up with a little trip to the beautiful Fraser Island (pissed it down) and to a superb little reggae festival at hippie Byron Bay (we arrived in full wet weather gear and it didn't rain a drop - the locals, in boardies and flip-flops, spotted the Poms).

Landed in Darwin last night. It was a choice between betraying my principles and flying, or taking a four day greyhound bus adventure through the outback. I flew. It was hard not to in the end - $180 dollars for a four hour flight versus over $500 in bus fares for a 40 hour trip. So the Outback will have to wait (which may be for the best, looking at this). Meanwhile I'll spend the next week exploring the top end and this tropical crazytown.

And waiting for the next storm, of course.

Howzat

2008-02-04T21:59:00.000Z

A famous win, and I was there to see it. Ok I think there were only a few hundred of us, and it wasn't quite as spectacular as the Ashes, but who's complaining. The MCG is a pretty amazing ground too.

Liking Melbourne. Very old school, Victorian, monied city. A little slice of North London in the southern hemisphere. It puts the neo in neo-gothic.

Sydney was nice too, obviously.

Must dash unfortunately, as I've run out of money in the internet place. Next stop Adelaide!

Here we go again...

2008-01-28T07:47:00.000Z

Well after a great two weeks in New Zealand with my parents (staying in luxury apartments, driving a hire car, eating out every night) I came back to backpacker life with a bump. A night in a hostel in the middle of nowhere, then four days tramping through the wilderness, then hitch-hiking my way back to civilisation... What fun.

The tramp wasn't so much fun, for once. It was maybe the hardest thing I've ever done - all knee deep in bogs, scrambling round landslides, and then pulling myself up a mountain by tree-roots. It felt like the Krypton Factor, eight hours a day for four days. I was reminded of that episode where a guy broke his leg and then JUST CARRIED ON - hobbling lamely along the crossbeam before taking the rope swing to Krypton History. No broken bones for me, but I emerged four days later covered in mud and cuts and bruises. At a huge James Bond style hydroelectric dam, strangely. That's kind of what New Zealand is like.

Anyway I think I've got the walking out of my system, for a while at least.

New Zealand was incredible but not at all what I expected. It's much more like the Isle of Wight than I expected. A little bit 1950s, a lot local, very rural and loads of campervans. But better scenery than the Isle of Wight - Blackgang Chine is nice, but it doesn't have glaciers or granite mountains or fiords.

The other thing that got me about New Zealand was how young it was. The Maori only settled it in the twelfth century and European/ Anglo explorers only arrived in numbers in the mid to late 19th century. It still has some quite interesting history - of Scottish Presbyterian idealists, or middle-class English Anglicans, or escaped Australian convicts or Chinese itinerant gold-miners - but there's something strangely impermanent about it too. For example in the whole country there's only one stone-vaulted church. I think there are more than that in the boundaries of Worthing.

All of this makes it sound like I didn't like New Zealand. I did - I loved it. Incredible hiking, great views, huge skies, and really civilised, friendly lifestyle. I was sad to leave after so short a time. But it was time to leave. And on to Australia, where I can see Bondi beach through my window and have a proper city on my doorstep. The people all sound the same to me, but I'm beginning to realise that there's a world of difference across the Tasman Sea. Fewer crazy mountains and fiords here, but more surf lifesavers, desert and poisonous creatures. Time to explore.

(I should add that I like the Isle of Wight, too.)

Upside down

2008-01-16T02:24:00.000Z

Well I've said goodbye to Latin America, for the timebeing, and hello to the Empire. For the first time since July I'm a subject of Her Majesty again and have been celebrating by gorging on Masterchef Goes Large, The Apprentice, Coronation Street, The Catherine Tate Show, and a litany of programmes featuring Martin Clunes, Robbie Coltrane or Jennifer Saunders.

It's a beautiful day, I'm in the adventure sports capital of the world, but today I think I'll watch some cricket on TV. It really is just like being at home. But cleaner, friendlier and quieter. The only downside is trying to understand what people say.

Anyway after five months in Latin America I should really have something useful to show for it. So here is a top five things to do in Latin America.

1. Hang on in Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia. Incredible. For $80 you can spend three days tearing round salt plains, mountains, turquoise lakes full of flamingos, mud volcanoes and deserts at 5,000m in a 4WD. If you're lucky you'll have a driver called Beko who between nodding off listens to 90s Eurohouse and tells you how it's all in the Bible - something to do with Noah's Ark. I think this really was the most amazing, surreal, absurd thing I've ever done.

2. See some old stuff in Mexico. I wonder if they need any UK civil servants there. What an incredible country - the best ruins in Latin America, crazy old colonial cities and churches, and street food that goes in one end and straight out the other.

3. Faff about in Panama. Until that conman canoeist rumbled it, I think Panama must have been Latin America's best kept secret. Apart from the possibilities for kidnap or murder, it's got everything a tourist could need - coffee mountains, Caribbean beaches, desert islands, colonial charm and some pretty cool forts and things. Bocas del Toro must have the best beaches in the Caribbean, and Panama City has a colonial centre to rival Habana, but without the relentless hassle. Until I got to Panama I thought that Captain Morgan was a rum and Francis Drake was probably a nice enough chap. Turns out they were both bastards.

4. See Cuba. Apparently you should do this "before Castro dies" but I'd wait until he's long gone. I've never met people so downbeat, weary and bitter in my life. Depressing. But incredible music, beaches, culture, history. And occassionally the people were quite nice. Occassionally.

5. Stumble round Torres del Paine. Great when the sun shines, unbearable when the rain sets in. What more could you want. Maybe a warm bed.

I could think of some other top fives too, for example my top five ruins (Palenque, Chan Chan, Macchu Pichu, Tikal, Pisac) or cities (Rio, Mexico City, Cartagena, Bogota, Buenos Aires) but I think it'd start getting tedious. Or perhaps that's more tedious. Latin America was incredible, and I want to go back, but it's nice to have some home comforts. Speaking of which, the cricket calls...

Mr Tony says feliz ano novo!!

2008-01-01T21:12:00.000Z

Worthing this ain´t. The fireworks were huge, the funk funky, and the sand still warm from the afternoon. Rio in the festive season. And I managed to survive the night without trying to climb anything or even falling over.

Happy New Year to you all!! I hope 2008 gives you everything you want. For me that would be fewer bus rides, then.

Leaving Los Lagos

2007-12-22T12:49:00.000Z

My relief at being on track for Santiago was short-lived. I couldn´t get out of Bariloche. Turns out that it´s a tourist mecca for canny Chileños cashing in on the weak peso, and every bus across the border was booked out. Bugger. An ugly place (think gingerbread town, very twee, very Swiss, but with lots and lots of 18 year old drunk Argentines) that was also going to be my downfall. I was 1000km south of Santiago, on the wrong side of a frontier, with 48 hours until my flight. I dusted down my thumb.

My only other attempt at hitch-hiking in Patagonia had been a resounding failure. I´d stood next to gravelly Ruta 40 for half an hour without a single car coming past, before giving up and going to the bus station. This time I´d need to get about 200km across the Andes and into Chile and from there pray that I could get a bus to Santiago on the last Friday before Christmas. Easy.

Started well enough - got a bus to the next town along, began walking and within five minutes Raúl from San Martín had pulled over. He asked where I was from. I hesitated, thought about saying Ireland, but came clean - I´m from England. And on cue he started on Las Malvinas... This could get ugly... But it didn´t, turned out he´s an Anglophile who was in Bath just last year. We talked old buildings and canals.

Unfortunately Raúl was only going 7km, but it was a start. I was now only 17km from the Argentine border post, 32km from the frontier and 59km from the Chilean post.

Five hours later and I´d walked across the Argentine post and was trudging uphill across the Andes. No-one had so much as slowed down. And in the previous two hours there´d only been 12 cars. Where was everyone? I´d miscalculated. All hope was lost. Río was slipping from my grasp.

And just as I was giving up, stuck in the no-man´s land between Chile and Argentina, 40km shy of Chilean immigration and with a flight from Santiago in less than two days, car number 13 rescued Christmas. It was an SUV really, with "Udder Health" written on the side and driven by Flor the cow-vet. Who was going to Osorno.

I think I´ve written about hitch-hiking before. It´s incredibly frustrating, usally either mind-numbingly boring or very hard work, and only occassionally punctuated by success. A bit like fishing without the relaxation or queuing up at the post office when all the windows are closed. Probability means nothing - the odds are either 1 or 0 and usually they´re 0. It doesn´t matter what you do - stop in a good spot, take off your hat, smile, look innocent, look gringo, look desperate, bag on your back, bag on the roadside, one bag on, one bag off; if someone wants to pick you up then they will and if they don´t then they won´t. Positive thinking makes it worse. You´re better to expect that no-one will pick you up, cos everyone´s a bastard, and resign yourself to doing those 60km on foot, most of the night, and then looking for a bus.

But just occassionally you get a ride. And then it´s the best thing you´ve ever done, the idea you wish you´d had three months ago. In this case not only did I get a lift to Osorno but I also got to the bus station in time to buy the last ticket to Santiago (ha!), had a great night out in an indie bar in Osorno (complete with Rev. Morrissey on the wall) and spent yesterday afternoon visiting dairy farms in the Chilean Lake District. (If they ask me on my way into Brasil if I´ve been in contact with farm animals I think I´ll lie...)

Once again, Mr Tony just about makes it. Time to get my bus to the airport and then go to Río. Where it´s raining, apparently.

Y Flor, si estás leyendo, gracias - salvaste mi navidad!

Beautiful Paine

2007-12-19T16:53:00.000Z

3 bowls of porridge
1 orange
2 apples
1 yoghurt
50g granola
400g nuts and raisins
1 packet of crackers
6 cereal bars
4 tins of tuna
300g pasta
1 carton of tomato puré
3 "Hamlet" chocolate bars
1 hot chocolate
1 tub of dulce de leche

Plus a tent, sleeping bag, mat and some clothes is all you need for three days hiking. It´s not eating well, but then coming off the cruise I needed to lose my Antarctic Belly. Which I did. The hike was round Torres del Paine - maybe the most beautiful, inspiring, and changeable place I´ve ever walked in. One day I was nearly blown off a mountain, the next day seared under a hot Patagonian sun, then caught in a blizzard of snow, hail and rain. From mountains to alpine meadows to boulder fields to blue and turquoise lakes to glaciers. I ended up more or less where I started but I think in those three days I did about 120km. Most of it seemed to be going up.

Unfortunately I also didn´t wash. Which must´ve been a real pleasure for everyone else on the bus back.

I spent a large part of my hike with a slightly silly song by The Burns Unit bouncing round my head. The words were,

Going on a hike
A very nice hike
A hike is the very
Thing I like
Over the hill and
Over the Dyke

Ok once or twice, but not when you´re walking for 11 or 12 hours a day. It reminded me of home, and of Christmas too.

Post Torres I´ve headed on up through southern Patagonia, this time on the Argentine side. Sounds fun but for the most part it´s been buses on dirt and gravel roads along Argentina´s (apparently) famous Ruta 40. Six hours one day, four the next, a day off (where I walked another 40km round El Chaltén, which was also stunningly beautiful - as my uncle Tom, one of the three or so readers of this blog, said it would be), then 12 more hours on Monday and finally eight hours yesterday/ this morning. The latest bus spat me out at 2am in a small town called Esquel.

Too late for a hotel, too early to leave, this morning I sat in a bus terminal for six hours and read a book. So I´m feeling a bit frayed. But come 8am I finally managed the small step to my destination for these last few days - a tiny Welsh Patagonian village called Trevelin (Trewelyn).

So what´s become of the Welsh pioneers? Turns out not much, really. In an odd parallel with post-war Wales, the big mill closed and folk shut up shop, leaving behind an ugly little village with just the occassional hint of Gallic influence - an old Wesleyian church, a (usually mis-spelt) street name, a shop sign without vowels, a goofy local. There might be a big Welsh iceberg floating underneath but I didn´t hit it. And while there´s a bilingual school in town, according to the woman at the museum only around 20% of people in Trevelin are of Welsh descent, and while most of those speak some Welsh round the house it´s in decline (and non-existent as written word).

I did, however, have an absolutely great pot of tea accompanied by two slices of buttered bread, five pastries, a scone and assorted jams. Me fat bastard. I told the (Welsh-speaking) owner that it was the best cup of tea I´d had in ages. Probably since I left the UK. It was a big pot too, and so an hour later I staggered out, still minus sleep but plus about half a pound of sugar and maybe six cups of tea. I feel slightly euphoric.

My euphoria is also in no small part because I am feeling very, very close to Santiago - and from there it´ll be a short hop by plane to Río for Christmas on the beach. By my reckoning I´ve taken 146 buses in the Americas, plus I think 21 ferries, six flights and 26 hitched rides. Now I reckon I´ve only got three buses left - a short four hour ride to Bariloche, then five hours across to Osorno in Chile, and nine on up to Santiago. It´s great how quickly you forget the stultifying boredom, badly dubbed movies, smelly toilet and noisy neighbour that come with so many bus rides. I look forward to most of them now (I´m looking forward to the sunset tonight, and sleeping, and eating an apple) and when they´re done I feel like I´ve achieved something. Like sitting on a bus for eight hours.

Anyway. Enough of this, I need to drink more coffee. My last word on buses - you can tell where you are in South America by the drivers as much as by what they drive. Just three days ago I was on a bus driven by Phil Daniels with Henry Cooper helping him. You don´t get that in Bolivia.

Buen Navidad.

Don´t eat yellow snow

2007-12-10T16:04:00.001Z

Made it back from Antarctica in one piece, didn´t sink or nothing. Closest we got was parking the boat on some sea ice and going for a ski. Not much in Antarctica, here´s a list:

- Ice
- Rocks
- Penguins
- Seals
- Ukranian scientists making their own vodka
- An English pub with a dart board
- Whales
- Ice
- Snow
- Argentinians, who claim most of Antarctica too
- Very old tourists
- Snow and ice

Amazing ten days though. In Chile now, waiting to go on a walk for a few days round Torres del Paine. Meant to be beautiful but it´s freezing here too. And I think I´ve got man flu.

Poor me.

Mr Tony says relax

2007-11-27T20:23:00.000Z

So after six months and 20 days I´ve finally made it to the bottom of the world. They call it the "end of the world" here, and at $2 an hour for the internet, $10 for a steak and $12 to get into the local museum they may not be wrong. It´s like the Orkney Islands have been taken over by tourist agencies and trendy young marketing executives.

But at least I can relax. From tomorrow I´ll be sleeping in the same bed for ten nights. Albeit a mobile bed navigating its way through the Southern Ocean and, hopefully, away from icebergs. But my bed has a reinforced steel hull so I´m not too worried (it also has a doctor, a historian, an ornothologist, a marine biologist, glaciolocist, mountaineer, and a full ship´s complement of seamen and women - my bed will, in fact, be a boat).

This has been a slightly cathartic experience for me. In total I´ve now done about 30,000 kilometres from near the top to the bottom of the Americas, and I´m rather pleased with myself for managing to do the entire bit from the Canadian rockies to Buenos Aires only by land and sea (taking five months at it). This morning I finally ran out of time and flew - a luxury, and cheaper (and fully 50 hours quicker) than bussing it. In truth most of the last six weeks, from Cartagena to here, has been a crazy rush. Every day something new and most nights on a bus... Would´ve been great to chill out, perhaps in Sucre, Bolivia, as a friend did - although by the looks of it she got out just in time. ("Residents' groups were patrolling the streets after police fled their posts." Never a good sign...) Anyway I´ll have plenty of time to chill out at sea.

And for the first time since St John´s, Newfoundland, I´m back on the Atlantic. Almost feels like home.

PS. Did I mention how cold it is here? 8C today, which I think is colder than home. And it´s meant to be the start of summer here...

Mr Tony offers advice to carnivores in Argentina

2007-11-25T02:47:00.001Z

Don´t indulge in two hours of eating steak and chips, lots of steak and chips, just before getting on a night bus.

But I´ve made it to Buenos Aires. Argentina´s great, even if lots of people want to talk to me about the Falklands (or as an English guy here called them, "the Maldives"). And the rest of the Argentines are probably too busy spraying anything British-looking with nationalist slogans to talk to me.

Today I´ve gatecrashed the Falklands War Memorial, seen the Atlantic for the first time since St John´s, Newfoundland, in June, and got out to my first Latin American football match. The main differences with British football:
- The fans can properly sing
- The teams keep the ball on the floor
- They stay on their feet when they´re tackled
- No-one leaves before the end (but I realised later, when I tried to go, that it´s probably just cos the cops don´t let them leave...)

Absolutely rubbish game though. Brighton play better than that most weekends.

Anyway it´s midnight here, which means it must be time to hit the clubs of Tango City.

Mr Tony gets high, hangs around a bit and then comes down

2007-11-23T14:02:00.001Z

In fact, the highest I´ve ever been - at a gasping 5,200 metres in southern Bolivia. That´s higher than Mont Blanc, and about 30 times higher than Cissbury Ring (which I still think is pretty high). I also got to the highest city in the world, Potosí (4,000 metres), and scrambled, squeezed and wheezed around the infamous silver and zinc mines. Hungry China has ensured that the miners here continue to make a good living. If working without respirators, in air so thin that they can´t breathe if they cover their mouths, doing eight hour shifts without food, and subsisting on fizzy drinks and lots and lots of coca, is a "good" living. Most can´t manage more than ten years in the mines and if they last that long then they won´t live beyond 50 - poisoned by arsenic and dust ore. It really was hellish (and strangely, they have shrines to the devil throughout the mines... but more on that another time).

Apparently Potosí is also in the Motorcycle Diaries but I don´t remember it. I did bring a copy with me to read on my travels, with the vague plan of following the route backwards, but then I gave it away to a girl in Nicaragua. Oops.

I also got pretty high in Peru. Started off at sea level at the incredible ruins of Chan Chan - an immense, sprawling, dusty expanse of crumbling walls and desert scrub, more like West Africa than coastal Peru. Apparently it´s the biggest pre-Colombian site in the Americas and the biggest mud city in the world. Pretty busy place too, with teams of workers toiling away, excavating and rebuilding. It looked like they might find the Lost Ark, and remembering what happened to those Nazis in the film I made a quick exit. After Trujillo it was Lima and then up again into the high Andes - Arequipa, Cusco, the gringo trail to Macchu Picchu, before crossing into Bolivia via Lake Titicaca (the world´s highest navigable lake, no less).

So two short, incredible weeks in Peru were followed by just a week or so in Bolivia - still following the Andes, through the Salt Plains of Uyuni as far as the Chilean border before doubling back to Potosí and on to Tupiza - a dusty, mountainous, frontier town straight out of the wild west. I spent my last day in Bolivia on a horse on the trail of Butch and Sundance. Realising that the site of their last stand was 110km away, and that my horse was more interested in the long grass than in taking me any further, I decided to head for Argentina.

Which is where I am now. In Córdoba, at a balmy 400 metres and outside the tropics for the first time since August. Summer is just beginning down here, and the town and people are looking pretty beautiful for it too. No surprise that Argentines are so arrogant (although a few did feign sympathy in the bar where I caught England´s sad demise on Wednesday).

Today´s mission is to find Ché´s family home. I´m pretty sure that the address is in the Motorcycle Diaries...

PS. Buenos Aires next, before my mission to Antarctica. Saw this on the news today - I nearly booked on the exact same cruise, until I found one for half the price. I leave next Tuesday. Fingers crossed that the straights are clear eh.

Something for the weekend

2007-11-03T00:37:00.000Z

I found my guinea pig at a Sunday Market in a little pueblo an hour or so from Cuenca. You can see me tucking into its liver here as the poor fellow looks on helplessly. It would be enough to make you go veggie if you hadn´t known you´d been eating bits of animals all these years. Guinea pigs are a sunday special in Ecuador and Peru but I´m not really sure why. It just tastes like stringy, greasy rabbits. I suppose they didn´t used to have rabbits out here.

We didn´t used to have rabbits in Western Europe either, until the Romans introduced them. The Roman rabbits were sickly little Mediterranean things, so they kept them on an island (I think in the Bristol Channel) and bred them into super rabbits, capable of withstanding the vagaries of the British Isles. Now they´re everywhere.

This reminds me that I was meant to write something about food. I´ve not really been taking photos of my food, as that would be a bit weird - sitting in a restaurant on my own, writing and photographing my dinner. But I have made a few exceptions. This one is for Oliver Owen, to show him that Colombian food can look remarkably similar to what they serve in the Colombian restaurant in Brixton market:

And this was a rather nice spread that was served as an accompaniment to a pint of beer in San Cristóbal, Mexico:

Generally the food in Mexico wasn´t great, and mostly just gave me food poisoning (known as the Revenge of Moctesuma in those parts). Cuba was worse, usually just rice and beans, and the rest of Central America wasn´t much better. There were a few honourable exceptions though - like that tapas in San Cristóbal and mole (chicken in a kind of bitter chocolate sauce, and nothing at all to do with rodents) in Oaxaca.

The food has got a lot better in south america. Colombians in particular pile it high with plenty of fried plantain, minced beef, pork scratchings and (of course) rice and beans; while the stews, usually with unrecognisable bits of animal and bone, are great too.

The best food was in the US and Canada though. Boston baked beans, crawfish on the west coast and crab and lobster on the east, game in the bits in between. I miss it. And a good curry.

Anyway have to catch a night bus now so hasta luego. I am very much enjoying the insides of buses. Really, I am.

Mr Tony ate my guinea pig

2007-10-28T01:30:00.000Z

Well, almost. As we passed the "Casa del Cuy" (or "House of the guinea pig") I realised too late that it wasn`t a pet shop. I got off the bus in the next town, a funny place called Cañar, and looked around. No Cuys there.

I`m in Ecuador in a nice little city called Cuenca. According to an Ecuadorian that I met near Quito, the guinea pig is sacred here and many people in more traditional areas still keep guinea pigs in their front rooms to ward off evil spirits. So why do you eat them?! "Er... because they`re sacred... it`s better that we eat them... " Logic that doesn`t work in India. Tomorrow I`m going to head for a few Sunday markets and see if I can`t pick up my own Cuy and perhaps an Ecuadorian cookbook. It`ll keep me lucky for months.

Ecuador is pretty amazing. Travelling north to south along the Andes, the bits that I`ve seen have been all mountains, volcanoes, colonial cities and highland villages. But venture a few hours west and you hit the beach and a few hours east and you`re in the jungle. It`s mental - in less than the space from Brighton to London, the land goes from 0 to 6,000 metres, and from deep equatorial jungle to surreal equatorial glaciers.

And I`m now in the southern hemisphere. I confirmed this by pouring a bucket of water down a sink at the equator. There was no vortex. Incredible. But strangely my compass still works.

Anyway not much else to report. I do requests...

PS. Loads more photos online now, at the photobucket place. I`ve got a bit trigger-happy so not sure where to start - from Mexico there`s some cool ones of Guanajuato and Zacatecas, as well as the ruins at La Quemada, Palenque, Monte Alban and Chichen Itza. Some nices ones of Habana in Cuba too - they manage to make it look better than it is. Unfortunately I think I`ve lost most of my photos of Central America after mislaying a memory stick, but there`s a few from there too.

And also I`ve got some more videos on youtube. The best ones are this guy tearing up "My Way" on the flute in Habana, and me nearly getting hit by fireworks in a street party in Nicaragua. Enjoy.

Tall tales

2007-10-20T00:35:00.000+01:00

I´ve sailed all my life, but I don´t really enjoy it. I went to one of those public schools where everyone learns to sail. But, in my line of work, it comes with the territory. Ibiza, Mexico, Guatemala, the States and now Colombia. I go where the opportunities are and develop them. I think I´ll head to Nicaragua next, just off the Mosquito coast.

I´ve been overboard a few times. Once when I was out with friends. They were too busy looking at some whales, while I slipped off the other side. I floated in the ocean for an hour until a passing ship saw me and picked me up. Not happy. The other time was when I was hit by the boom in the middle of a tropical storm. I stumbled and fell, but as I thrashed in the water I reached up and just caught the end of my dinghy, which was tied behind the yacht. I hauled myself aboard - safe.

Speaking of whales though. The number one cause of boats sinking? Whales. Huge whales will throw themselves on board and flip the boat. I shit you not.

I used to work out in Ibiza, one big party out there. I´d organise deep sea fishing trips for tourists. We never caught anything, but I was a pro at getting folk on board. It´s all about psychology. I´m a great fisherman though. I used to fish for tuna - monster fish, 700 pounders. The thing with a fish that big is that you can´t sell it, cos it´ll depress the fish market and the local fishermen lose out. So I´d sell them to the fisherman at a cut price, then everyone´s happy.

Working Central America is harder though. A lot of corruption out here, and everyone is out to get a piece of you. Some of them just need to be killed. I know that sounds bad but, you see, I studied criminology and I used to interview murderers. And they´re usually the good guys. You have to be pretty fucking bad to someone to drive them to murder you.

So I always carry a weapon. On this boat I´ve got a harpoon gun and a German rocket launcher. The launcher´s for attracting attention though. It´s set to go off at 200 metres so it wouldn´t be much use in a fight. It´s just rattle around until it blew up. I really need to get a machine gun. There´s a lot of pirates round here. An AK or an M-16.

When I ran the lottery in Canada, I always carried a Colt 0.45 in my kevlar briefcase. One time I heard that a gang was coming after me, so I bought a shotgun and drove round the town with it in the front seat. So they´d know not to shit with me. But then I thought, how do I know this even works? So I took it out to a farmer´s field to try it out. But just as I was getting ready to fire, I heard a scream behind me. I span round and shot. It was an eagle. A split second later and it would´ve got me. It limped round until I finished it off.

But hey, robbery´s the way to go. That´s how I´m going to retire. I´m 60 now, and in 15 years I´ll make one big hit on a bank. If I get away with it then I win, if they catch me then I get free bed and board. I´ve got my eye on a great little prison in Vancouver. Right on the ocean with its own vegetable garden.

You know, I´ve been running this Panama to Colombia thing too, taking backpackers. But it´s hard work. One time some kid invited a drug dealer on board. I won´t have anyone on by boat that´s not invited. I went to get my knife, but luckily they got him off again before I got back. It´s trouple now though, cos the gangs in San Blas think I´m running drugs. That makes me a target. A similar thing happened out in Tayrona last year. I took a German guy out on a private charter and within an hour he´s coked up to the eyeballs, powder all over him like Scarface. He passed out, so we took him back to his place. Next day, he´s going round town saying that I stole his drugs. Now they´ll be after me as well.

Yeah, Latin America´s tough. And there´s too many streetkids. All in gangs and robbing and dealing drugs. They should be killed, like they´re doing in Guatemala. I agree with that. One time, when I was running a resort in Belize, my guests were being hassled by a gang of kids. So I took to the jungle after them. I tracked them for five days, with my bow and arrow, setting traps. On the fifth day I caught them, and said "I don´t care what you do to other people, don´t fuck with my people." And they didn´t. That´s the language they respect.

But overall, I think that the catapult is the best weapon. It´s easy to carry, it packs a punch, and it´s non-lethal. One time, some guys tried to kidnap me in Honduras. But thanks to my catapult I got away. The next day everyone was shouting my name. Even the ones who tried to abduct me.

Oh, and don´t talk to me about women. They expect you to pay maintenance even when they said they were on the pill. My kids are well looked after. And women hold everything you say against you. Mark my words - we´ll regret the day we gave them equal rights.

At about this point, there was a huge thud, a shake and then silence. John, our obnoxious, misogynist, sociopathic serial fantasist/ boat captain had talked so much he´d run us aground. Two hours later we got free, with the help of half a dozen locals in two other boats, and back to Cartagena. But he´d made me realise that everyone who lives on a yacht is fucking nuts, and not just the lunatic Italian who´d taken us from Panama to Colombia.

In Popayán in Southern Colombia right now, plan to head to Ipiales on the border with Ecuador tomorrow. I like Colombia a lot. Cheap and wholesome food, great coffee, amazing scenery, loads of history, stunning women and Marxist guerrillas. You need months to do it justice and I´ve only had time to dip my toes in the water. When I come back I´ll jump in.

Incommunicado

2007-10-14T20:02:00.000+01:00

So I´ve made it to South America. Nine days ago I was on my way to the airport in Panama City, but decided to stop by a hostel that fixes people up with yachts sailing to Colombia. Two nights in Portobelo (a tiny town, only famous for being sacked by the British in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries - by Henry Morgan, Francis Drake and Edward Vernon) and six nights at sea later, and I´m in the land of narcotrafficking and great coffee.

The boat trip was in the long tradition of Caribbean crossings. Overcrowded, smelly, bumpy and with a lunatic captain. But on the plus side, more desert islands, dolphins and the deep blue sea. And it looks like I´ve missed loads while I´ve been away, like:

British politics turned upside down - when I left there was going to be an election... (although as with most things, the great Peter Hitchens has got this one spot on)
Boring boring England nearly doing it again
Brighton unbeaten in five matches. Good Old Sussex By the Sea...

Off to try to catch the other rugby somewhere now, followed by Colombia v Brazil in the football. Here´s to Colombia, and a fiesta tonight...

"Have you ever been to a discoteca de gay?"

2007-09-29T19:13:00.000+01:00

It wasn´t a question that I was expecting in Nicaragua, and they probably didn´t expect my answer. "Er, I´m not sure..." (I then had to explain, in Spanish, that I grew up near Brighton and used to live near Vauxhall. So I´d been to plenty of nights that were a bit... well... gay. Of course I should have added that I´m straight...)

After a fun enough day in León, a slightly gritty colonial town in Nicaragua, I´d decided to set off in search of "Old León" - the site of the original Spanish colony that was founded in 1524 (nearly half a millenium ago?!) and abandoned in 1610, after the Spanish had exhausted all the gold and indigenous labour and found better places to settle. Getting there was a bit of a challenge - 20km in a "colectivo" (minibus) then a 10km hitch down a windy road (in theory there´s a bus, but luckily a passing farmer called Arturo picked me up).

The site itself wasn´t much kop and I could see why the Spanish left. Hot, sticky, mosquito-infested lowlands with the remains of a few old buildings and a couple of statues. I walked back to wear the bus was meant to be and waited.

Then waited some more.

Then a car came past, the first for maybe half an hour, and asked me where I was going. León. "Us too, hop in." So I did. Sergio and Juan Antonio, both in their 40s and both health professionals (one a surgeon dentist, the other some kind of consultant). As we pulled away Miguel turned on the stereo. Eye of the Tiger. Not what I was expecting.

A couple of things were a bit incongruous. The music, the way they answered each others' questions, the way Juan Antonio patted Sergio on the head, Juan Antonio´s resemblance for Uncle Monty in Withnail and I. Maybe they´re gay, I thought.

"The Power of Love" came on the stereo.

After stopping for food we headed on to León, and after discussing travel, history, Nicaragua, and language the conversation finally turned to sexuality, in about seven tortuous questions.

"Do you dance?"
- Very badly, not like the Cubans. They can dance.

"What music do you like?"
- Er... not sure how to say any of this in Spanish... Er... The Beatles? (Easier)

"Do you go to discotecas?"
- Yes, sure

"What sort of discotecas are there in the UK?"
- Er... loads...

"Have you ever been to a discoteca de gay?"

Well, I answered honestly at least. I was also thrown by the music, which had turned to the Ghostbusters theme. We arrived at León a little later, I thanked them for the ride and shouted them a cup of coffee.

My first and maybe last experience of hitch-hiking in Latin America was also the strangest yet. Nice folk though, and they gave me a great tip for a hotel in Granada where I stayed for the next few nights (the Alhambra, apparently Granada´s signature hotel and something of a luxury). This was followed by a few days on Isla de Ometepe (in Nicaragua Lake) and now Costa Rica.

So still heading south, and still enjoying Central America. Next stop the Caribbean.

We are going for reform of the constitution!

2007-09-22T21:48:00.000+01:00

Just one of the snappy election slogans in Guatemala. Ominously, it´s from the leader of a party who, as head of the prison service, dealt with their overcrowding problem by summarily executing the surplus. "Constitutional reform" in Guatemala probably isn´t a Good Thing.

[By contrast the head of our prison service, a very nice man called Martin Narey who I met once, went on to become chief executive of the children´s charity Barnardos.]

Here´s some of the runners and riders in the race to be boss of Narco- and coffee- and languagestudent-land (the first round of voting was on 9 September, with a run-off between the first two parties below in November):

National Unity of Hope (UNE) Party "Your hope is my promise" - the leading party, mostly look like insurance salesmen
Partido Patriota "Security and jobs" - the party of the military I think, they´ve dressed them up to look like Kwik-Fit mechanics
Gran Alianza Nacional (GANA, or "win" in Spanish, very clever) - this is our friend the prison murderer
UCN "Better times are coming" - their guy wears a sombrero
Alianza Nueva Nacion "Something very dull about welfare and more money for public servants" - the local socialists
Frente Republica Guatemala "You can trust us this time" - ruled for a few years post-democracy, until their leader disappeared with $1bn. Where did he find $1bn in the first place?
DIA "A new day" - Slightly surrealist party, I´m not even sure they´re a party. Just lots of their logos painted on everything that doesn´t move
PAN "The people´s party" - a popular band from the 1970s, now making a run for Pan-American control
Encuentro por Guatemala "An encounter for Guatemala" - an indigenous Mayan party, headed by a nobel prize winner. Never stood a chance, unfortunately.
BIEN "Welfare for the people" - too right
URNG Maiz "Eat more corn for a strong Guatemala" - no idea what this was about
Men and women of the sombrero "Trust the hat" - nor these people

OK I made some of the slogans up, but if you´re really interested there´s something on Wikipedia about it.

The elections show up some of the contradictions of Guatemala today. Proudly Mayan but run by "ladinos" (Spanish descent); progressive but totalitarian; optimistic but still haunted by the civil war; warm and friendly but a bit nuts. But the election passed off peacefully, and it seems like life goes on...

I wasn´t there for nearly long enough to do anything more than scratch the surface unfortunately, but a great place to spend a week. After the jungles of Tikal I got out to the mountains in the south - from Mayan ruins to Spanish colonial ones. Tikal, Quetzaltenango, Lago de Atitlán, Antigua. The tourist trail in Guatemala is a bit like visiting an antique zoo and this time I was unfortunately an unashamed tourist. Although I did take chicken buses between most of these places (so called cos they´re the local buses, usually former US school buses, that people ride with their chickens) rather than the air-con touristmobiles, and have continued to sleep in crummy hostels and eat street food.

I left the "Mundo Maya" via Copan, Honduras - maybe the best Mayan ruins of the lot, with crazy carved stone statues and huge temples looking over Honduran mountains. Spent even less time in that original banana republic though - I think I was in Honduras for 32 hours, 23 of those on different buses, three at the ruins and maybe six in bed.

Nicaragua now, where I´ll recharge for a week or so before heading further south.

Not sure how to do the next bit, so any answers on a postcard... what´s the cheapest way to get from Nicaragua or Costa Rica to Colombia (Cartagena ideally)? I´ve heard that you can fly to San Andres, a Colombian island in the Caribbean, and then get a local flight, but can´t find it online. Any top tips? A cheapo present from the republic of your choice to the winner...

Good Old Sussex By The Sea!!! (Part 2)

2007-09-22T19:56:00.000+01:00

Incredible. Sussex do it again, and for the third time in five years. Only wish I´d been there to see it, sat in one of the deck-chairs at the county ground with a beach-ball under my arm and a seagull on my head. All together now...

Good old sussex by the sea
Good old sussex by the sea
And you can tell them all
That we´ll stand or fall
For sussex by the sea

Jungle is massive!

2007-09-13T01:36:00.000+01:00

Enjoying my last night in Belize, before heading to Guatemala tomorrow. Have left the beaches of the Yucatan and the Caribbean for the steamy jungle of the Maya mountains. It's a bit hot.

Belize is pretty cool - great snorkelling off Caye Caulker, which is a tiny island full of rastas and jerk chicken places; and lots of Mayan jungle stuff in the interior. Apart from that it's a pretty corrupt little former British colony with a few rich people and lots of dirt poor ones, bad food, and alcoholics. A bit like Nigeria but with tourism.

Not much else to report really. Looking forward to Guatemala...

Cuba libre

2007-09-07T01:43:00.000+01:00

Made it out of Cuba in one piece and with the shirt still on my back. The second week was much, much better than the first...

Some of the highlights of Cuba include:
- Cigars that cost 7p
- Buying knock-off Cohibas from people who work in cigar factories
- Warm blue seas, beautiful white sand beaches and having your beach towel stolen by pigs and/ or chickens in the jungle behind
- The music
- The rum (some of which also costs about 7p, while Havana Club Blanco costs 2GBP a bottle)
- Very, very occassionally the Cuban people. If you get as far as Baracoa, which is as far from Habana as it´s possible to get, and then cycle 20km along a dirt road, across rivers and through coffee plantations, then you may just meet some.

This began to make up for the terrible food, the relentless hustlers, the grinding poverty and the general sense of despair and isolation. But it still felt more like a challenge than a holiday, one that I was lucky enough to share with plenty of other travellers saying the same thing. None of them said they´d be going back. Think I might be, one day.

Great to be back in Mexico though - feels like home. Next stop Belize.

Comrade Tony, still waiting for the revolution.

Viva la revolucion! Viva Fidel! 80 mas!

2007-08-28T22:48:00.000+01:00

Despite everyone telling me that Cuba is expensive, depressing and a bit rubbish I decided to go anyway. Turns out everyone was (a bit) right... or at least about Havana.

For me it was a dull, dirty, dispiriting city - full of scam artists and where at best you´re tolerated and at worst you´re despised. Usually you´re just treated like the shit on someone´s shoe. Not completely surprising in a country that´s totally reliant on the tourist trade and where waiters earn more in tips than doctors earn from the state (the average state wage is something like $13 a month), but the result is that everyone has taken to (basically) begging tourists for money.

It´s depressing really, all the more so because you can´t help but feel guilt, pity, anger about the toxic combination of US intransigence/ barbarity and Cuban incompetence. But it´s also dehumanising (for everyone). A few of the highlights have been:

- A worker at the Capitolio (an amazing building in Havana, basically a replica of the US capital building) who talked at me for 10 minutes in Spanish and then asked me for a dollar (I paid, dummie).
- The paladar owner (a paladar is a restaurant in someone´s house) who charged me $27 (two months wages?!) for a pretty ordinary meal. I´d not asked to see the prices first - it was my first night, I´ve since learnt - so had to pay up.
- An attendant at an (empty) boxing gym who said I could look round for free, then said I could take photos for $1, then tried to charge me $1 for every photo. I gave her $1.50 and left.
- Getting my pocket picked on a busy local bus. Oops. Only lost $30, but it´s the thought that counts.

It´s ´not that I mind being ripped off but I do resent scammers getting my money...

Anyway, I managed to put up with it for a few days and then headed for Trinidad, which is a lovely little colonial city about halfway down the island. Absolutely loads of hustlers here too but (unfortunately, really) at least I know how to deal with them now. Next stop is Santiago and then on to Baracoa, which is meant to be the Cuban Shangri-La. Some hope...

Still having fun, just about, but in a slightly bad mood,

Comrade Tony

Good old Sussex by the sea...

2007-08-20T20:21:00.000+01:00

Well for the first time in ages (maybe ever) I really wish I was back at home. No, not so that I could go to my own funeral, but so that I could meet Dave. So pleased that Worthing is on the map for all the right reasons.

Hardly a key marginal though, mate.

Burping for Jesus

2007-08-18T21:58:00.000+01:00

In San Cristóbal, Chiapas, which is most famous for being the home of the Zapatistas. Not seen any yet so no appearances on hostage videos for the timebeing. Instead I´ve spent today cruising round Mayan villages including one (Chamula) where they´ve given up any pretence of Christianity and instead just do their version of the whole Mayan thing. For the most part this involves burning lots of candles, chanting, and downing bottles of coca cola so that they can burp out evil spirits. Apart from this last bit, it could almost be like church back home. Apparently coke works because the spirits are afraid of carbonated water. But some (mostly the men) insist on using the traditional method of distilled sugarcane.

So basically I went to a church full of drunks drinking rum and coke and waving their arms around. The pope has said that this isn´t Christian enough and excommunicated them; they´ve said they don´t care.

On the way out, I also saw an old dear very discretely, but firmly, sacrifice a chicken. Which was pretty grim. Nice villages round San Cristóbal, but this is no Mayan paradise. In Chamula the women can´t vote, the men can marry as often as they want, there´s no birth control, post-11 education is limited to boys, and they expel anyone who doesn´t practice their Mayan ways or who marries an outsider. 30,000 people and counting. Apparently they´re all very happy; I wandered round thinking about false consciousness (and blaming Ray Mears).

Not all the villages are like that though. One, called Zinacantan, had had its own little reformation in the 1960s when they realised they could make lots of money from flowers and didn´t have to throttle any chicken. Now they run a kind of flower mafia across the Yucatán. They also had a very nice church (with great floral displays, obviously).

On to Palenque tomorrow where I´ll wait out Hurricane Dean. Sounds very cool, but in fact I think it´ll just involve getting absolutely soaked by tropical thunderstorms.

Bye for now.

From the country that brought you Aztecs and wrestling masks

2007-08-14T02:12:00.000+01:00

In Mexico City right now ("DF", as it's known) making last use of the free internet before heading down to Oaxaca on the night bus. This city is pretty amazing and not at all how I expected. I think someone told me that it's huge, sprawling and in a basin, so I was braced for gridlock, pollution and shanty towns. But while it is definitely a bit mental (crazy street markets, grinding poverty and everything is slightly falling down) it also feels like a proper old European city. High end shops with high end prices, amazing Baroque architecture, and some beautiful (spotless) suburbs. I've heard Mexico described as at the crossroads between the rich and poor worlds and nowhere does this seem more true than here.

On the one hand it's pretty chaotic - there's a lot of under-employment (subsistence farmers outside the cities, hawkers inside them), poverty (I think many are Guatamalan immigrants dating from their civil war), and you can't drink the water. But for all that the standard of living is high, infrastructure is sound and it feels much safer than I expected. But then I think I was expecting something more like Lagos... Cities like Guanajato and Zacatecas, where I was at before here, could almost (with a squint, in the right light) be southern Spain.

The other thing that's been really striking, especially compared with the US, is how important indigenous history is here. The Spanish are the national villains while the big indigenous civilisations (Olmec, Toltec, Aztec, Chichimec, Maya and so on...) are mythologised. I was lucky enough to have been apprehended by a talkative Mexican farmer/ builder on my first day who summed it up, "You'll love Mexico. You'll see lots of Spanish stuff and lots of Indian stuff because that's what we are. We're Spanish and Indian." But in another typical Mexican contradiction, while the Spanish are the bad guys and the Indians the good, skin tone seems to be a pretty explicit indicator of social status here. Nearly every face on TV or billboards is white, but you'll hardly see a white face in real life, unless they're tourists or you're walking through a business district or upmarket suburb.

The old ruins are amazing, as expected (I went to one lot called La Quemada from about 600-900AD and another called Teotihuacan, which is a whole city from around 100-750AD). But unfortunately the best stuff, from the Aztec period, is mostly destroyed or underground - cos as soon as the Spanish won they ripped everything down and built their own stuff on top. So the cathedral is where the temples used to be, the National Palace where something else was. This also explains why a lot of the historic centre is noticably crooked and falling over - it was literally built on the rubble of the Aztec empire.

Anyway on a lighter note, the wrestling here is amazing. I went the other night and filmed some of it on my camera. You can watch it here and here.

Hasta luego, mis amigos.

Grandbag's funeral

2007-08-13T00:41:00.000+01:00

I've just found out that my namesake has gone to the great Hacienda in the sky. Gutted. Thanks for the Happy Mondays and Joy Division, Tone. Not so sure about Remote Control with Frank Sidebottom though...

me encanta!

2007-08-08T04:14:00.000+01:00

In Zacatecas, Mexico, and it´s great to be back in a civilised country. The last act in the US was a crazy rush for a bus with only 11 seats left; the driver´s words were "the first eleven to the bus get to ride". I was fourth in the queue and No 10 on the bus, I saw one elderly person get whacked on the head by a woman younger than me and a guy have his bags kicked out of his hands. Then five hours of smelly, noisy, bus hell (as usual). Savages.

Got to Juarez about four hours late but straight onto an air-conditioned spacebus to Chihuahua with fully reclining seats. It broke down a little while later (nowhere´s perfect...) but there was another one half an hour behind that picked us up.

Been in Mexico for four nights now and so far I´ve not heeded the advice from one friend, "Take a 16" blade with you and strap 10 kilos of coke to your body on the way out, hope for the best."

Have stayed a night in Creel, then a train through the Copper Canyon to El Fuerte, on to the coast and Mazatlan (a smaller Acapulco, apparently) and now back into the mountains and the high plains of Zacatecas. Today I´ve been wandering round Mesoamerican ruins and about to hit the roof terrace for margaritas. All sounds more fun than it really is. Honest.

Still, my mum tells me that the weather´s picked up back home. Hope summer treats you all well.

T

Adios estados unidos, bienvenidos a mexico...

2007-07-30T04:42:00.000+01:00

Hey ho. In Alberquerque New Mexico, having spent the last few days a bit further north in Santa Fe and Taos. The Southwest (once you get past Vegas) is pretty cool - wish I could spend a bit more time here. But my visa waiver expires in four days so it's time to move on, lest I get picked up by some Minutemen from Texas...

Apparently Santa Fe is the oldest capital city in the US, having been founded by Spanish explorers in the early 17th century. You'd hardly guess now - pretty much the whole place is artists' studios and designer shops, and I arrived just in time for their "Spanish Market" which was mostly a showcase for expensive art and Catholic iconography. But once you get past that (and the washed up hippies) there's some pretty amazing old adobe buildings, a nice hostel and, well, not much else...

But we did see this guy playing in a tent and then managed to crash his new art gallery for a free show (I've put some of it on youtube here, he's really going for it).

On to Taos with some folk from the hostel, where we found more galleries and hippies. But also earthships... We ended up at this place, where we met a bunch of English people who reminded me why I don't like hippies. They'd got there through "magnetism", clearly had no idea how the place all worked ("we heal people, man...") and seemed to be mostly just enjoying the free food and board. Spongers ("we don't use labels, man"). Unfortunately we didn't meet Robert, who as you can see from the website specialises in dynamic pointing in skintight t-shirts, but did meet lots of crazy scientists who didn't seem to get on with the hippies. I imagine it'll end in some Young Ones-style climax, perhaps crossed with a Tomorrow's World experiment.

Anyway tonight I leave the US and head for Mexico. So to mark the occassion below are my top five places to go in the US and Canada, in case you're thinking of going on holiday. Or are just bored at work. Of course this ignores all the places I've not been to (pretty much all of the South and a big bit of the middle). But so what.

1. Nova Scotia. I thought this place was amazing. Halifax is a great little city with cool bars, nice people (all the cars stop to let you cross the road), comedy, indie music, gardens, garrisons, history. It's the only place I've been where they keep a macaw at the Maritime Museum and give out free cake on its birthday. [But ok, I've not been to many places that have Maritime Museums or macaws.] As well as Halifax, Cape Breton in the north may be the most beautiful bit of Canadian country ever (pine and beech forests, mountains, wild coast, whales, moose, bear). Go. Then blame me if it's shit.

2. Northwest US/ Canada. Vancouver, Vancouver Island, the Olympic Peninsula (Washington), Seattle and Portland together. Some great little cities - Vancouver is one of the top five cities in the world to live in; Portland has great beer; Seattle I thought was a bit past it, but... And superb countryside - anything north and west of Seattle (ie Olympic and Vanc Island) is just out of this world: temperate rainforests, rugged Pacific coastline, stunning sunsets, killer whales and so on. Here's the sun setting to prove it.

3. The Bay Area. San Francisco is always cool (particularly the Mission district, with the original missionary outpost from the 18th century), but don't miss Oakland or Point Reyes further up the coast (more rainforest and cool beaches). Also it's only a few hours from the Bay Area to Yosemite Park, which was ace.

4. Quebec City. History, slice of old Europe, and just a few hours from Montreal if you want a break. And if you stay at the hostel then they also run cheap excursions out, like to Montmorency Falls (although I missed this...)

5. Martha's Vineyard. Incredible diversity, from sand dunes to forests, rich towns with 100ft yachts to gingerbread houses founded as a Methodist camp. It's also got John Belushi's grave, a lighthouse called Gay Head and a nice hostel.

Anyway have to dash as about to run out of time. Wish me luck down south!!

Yin and yang

2007-07-27T06:05:00.000+01:00

Well it's been a little while, but I'm now online and undisturbed so can write properly. Being on holiday for a very long time is harder work than I thought - whenever I can get on a computer (every few days) I spend all my time either sorting my life out or catching up.

I've been in Flagstaff, Arizona for the last few days just chilling out, and it's a great place to do very little - great little hostel, small town, mountain air. Yesterday I ventured as far as the Lowell Observatory, which was the place where Pluto was discovered (which they're at pains to point out is "still officially regarded as a planet") and was founded by a chap called Percival Lowell (whose main claim to fame was hypothesising the existence of canals, and therefore intelligent life, on Mars - they played this down a bit at the observatory). Today I went on a tour of the Grand Canyon, which was nice.

But what's been troubling me most recently has been yin and yang. When I was camping in Yosemite, a girl I met there said that I'd love Las Vegas and that it was the Yang to Yosemite's Yin. The next day, I blew a tyre driving through Yosemite, twenty minutes later was pulled over by a cop for speeding, and then got to the campsite just after it had filled up. Definite yang. And Vegas yanged too - I stayed at the Sahara, where I learnt how to lose money on Blackjack (very well). I've just looked at my notes and found a bit of paper that says "Vegas: fucking shit hole".

So where's the yin? Well I did have a very good time in San Francisco, in particular hanging out with Hannah and Win, and I managed to hitch/ occassionally bus around Vancouver Island and the Olympic Peninsula in Washington in four days (both are amazing - check the photos from Olympic and VI. But I've not had much yin recently. I quite like the West and in particular the old stuff round San Francisco and the really incredible scenery up north. But there's something a bit ephemeral about it too, and occasionally just quite sad - too many old gold towns oil towns, too many dirt-poor reservations/ trailer parks.

Tomorrow I'm heading for New Mexico before heading down to the real thing next week. Wish me luck.

In other news, I've been quite getting into the US presidential race. Barack Obama only seems to stand for Hope, which I get the impression does quite well over here but doesn't really do it for me. Been very impressed with Chris Dodd and Joe Biden, but I guess it'll be Clinton.

Anyway even I'm getting bored by this so it must be painful for you and I have to vacate the computer in six minutes... Stay in touch people and let me know what's going on in the UK. I'm guessing that you're all becoming quite proficient swimmers.

My top tip: Pick up hitchhikers. Have I said this before?
What I'm listening to: I've put my MP3 player on shuffle, but it's best when the Burns Unit comes on...
Where next: Santa Fe - the US's first capital, no less

Previously on Mr Tony's adventures

2007-07-13T20:30:00.000+01:00

Mr Tony is two months into his adventures beyond the ultraworld, making good progress across the US and Canada by bus, train, car, thumb and (occasionally) plane.

So far the adventure has taken in 23 hostels, 4 hotels, 9 camps, the floors of two friends (Mark and Caroline's in Vancouver, and Hannah and Win's in Oakland), the back of one jeep and one "Hard Time Hollow" in the woods of Virginia.

In the last installment, Mr Tony had made it as far as Vancouver, Canada. Since then, against all odds, he managed to bus and hitch-hike around Vancouver Island and the Olympic Peninsula of Washington in four days, dashed through Portland, Oregon, and made it to Bolinas Beach outside San Francisco in time for Win Walker's 30th birthday party.

He has now said goodbye to Canada (sob) and hello to the Left Coast. He still needs a haircut.

Will try to write more tomorrow, but right now there's a queue of people waiting to use the computer so I'll stop there. Boo.

If you do encounter a bear

2007-07-08T08:02:00.000+01:00

If the bear is close to you, back away slowly. Never run.
Stay calm and move deliberately. This will help calm the bear and let it know that you are not a threat.
If you are in a group, bunch up, or join other hikers nearby.
If you are carrying bear spray, get it ready, just in case.
Speak to the bear in a normal tone of voice. This helps to identify you as human and satisfy the bear's curiosity.
Leave the area or take a detour. If this is impossible, wait until the bear moves away. Always leave the bear an escape route.

There are two types of bear attacks. What you do depends on which kind, as indicated by the bear's behaviour.

1. If the bear behaviour is defensive

You surprise a bear. It may be feeding, protecting its cubs, or just unaware of your presence. It sees you as an immediate threat and feels that it must fight. This is the most common attack situation.

If you have bear spray, use it (according to the manufacturer's instructions).
If the bear makes contact with you, play dead! Showing submission will probably end the attack.
Lie on your stomach with your legs apart, so that the bear cannot easily flip you over.
Cover the back of your head and your neck with your hands.
Keep your pack on to protect your back.

Defensive attacks seldom last more than two minutes. If the attack continues, it may have shifted from defensive to predatory.

In this case, fight back!

2. If the bear behaviour is predatory

The bear stalks you along a trail and then attacks, or the bear attacks you at night or in your tent. This kind of attack is very rare.

Try to escape into a building or car. Climb a tree.
If you can't escape, do not play dead.
Fight back! Use bear spray. Do whatever it takes to let the bear know that you are not about to give in.

So I've been in bear country, out in the forests of Western BC and Washington State, and in the Canadian Rockies. I only saw a few bears out there, and still the only one I've seen up close was this cub in Nova Scotia. But needless to say I was bricking it, particularly when I camped on my own out in Snoqualmie Forest near Seattle. I now know how to hang a bag of food 15 feet off the ground and 5 feet from the tree trunk.

In other news, I've got loads more photos online here, including some really cool ones of Carhenge and the Wild West. Will try to get through them all and post some up here too.

Today I did the Grouse Grind. It took me 54:57, which beats the average of 90 minutes but isn't quite in the "hikers who are physically fit" league, according to Wikipedia. What bollocks - I passed about 30 people and no-one passed me...

Off to Vancouver Island tomorrow, then more camping.

Have they no shame??

2007-07-08T00:34:00.000+01:00

I've just found out about this. I'll be on the next flight home.

Where the buffalo (used to) roam...

2007-06-24T21:11:00.000+01:00

"Sorry sir, we've run out of economy cars so I'm going to upgrade you to an SUV ."

I protested, lamely, that SUVs are bad, but by now I had no choice - I was in a car rental office 15 miles from Denver and about 200 miles from where I wanted to be that night (Alliance, Nebraska). So I took it. But I did ask for the smallest SUV they had, which still wasn't very small. Here's how I justified it:

I'd be driving a very long way. The plan was to take in Nebraska, South Dakota, Yellowstone and then back. The Jeep Laredo has cruise control, so I could get some kip while the car took the strain.
I'd be driving off-road. This was true to a point, as (sadly) all of the roads on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation are dirt. Which makes for pretty spectacular driving but also for bad karma. Pine Ridge is adjacent to the Black Hills - home of 'Wild' West cities like Deadwood, Cody, Buffalo, Sundance and Keystone; but also holy land for many Indian tribes and guaranteed to them by Treaty in 1868. Once gold was discovered, the land was illegally settled by 'pioneers' and then requisitioned by the government. The Indian tribes were left to Pine Ridge. A few years later, as if to rub it in, some muppet carved the faces of four US Presidents on one of their mountains. (The Indian response, the Crazy Horse Memorial, is immense - it's taken them 50 years so far and the head alone would fit all of Rushmore).
I could sleep in the Laredo's roomy interior. It was actually quite comfortable.
GLOBAL WARMING IS A MYTH!! It seems that as soon as you get West of Chicago, all radio is right-wing talk radio. And it really is as bad (or worse) than I expected. I stumbled on the Rush Limbaugh show and within an hour they'd covered gun control, abortion, climate change (which is a myth, apparently), taxation and trade union legislation. The late-night stuff was even worse - hateful, racist, paranoid lunacy. One guy decided to have a pop at Michael Moore's new film on healthcare, saying "LET'S TALK ABOUT THE REAL ISSUES!! Like our national language, illegals and criminals coming here from Mexico, the attack on our Christian identity, prayer in schools, our second amendment rights [to own machine guns], the liberal-controlled media. Let's not waste our time on stupid issues like healthcare - if they think it's so good in Cuba they should go live there." Another said that the US could learn a lesson from "Nambia" (where?!), "who can deport their illegals". But luckily I also found NPR, which reaffirmed my faith in humanity (this show, for example, is hilarious).

Anyway, a nice little road trip. I think your solstice was a bit bigger than mine, but I made it to Alliance, Nebraska in time (home of Carhenge) and got out to the Black Hills and Yellowstone too. Apparently some people are reading this for holiday tips - so mine would be to go to the Black Hills (particularly Hwy 87 and the Needles Highway in Custer State Park), drive West on Hwy 16, but skip Yellowstone. The Grand Tetons just south of it looked much better.

House of Blues

2007-06-17T06:33:00.001+01:00

A very long day, and rather than let it pass I thought I should capture this moment in electronic aspic. My last 24 (or 29) hours has gone something like this.

6pm, Thursday. Join the queue for the bus to Chicago. It's a 12 hour journey from Toronto, and the only buses are at 6am (arriving 11pm, after the time change) or 6.30pm (arriving 5am). I opt for the overnighter.

Midnight. Arrive US immigration, Detroit. They ask me why I'm going to Chicago and not staying in Detroit. I think it's a joke.

5am. Arrive Chicago. Maybe two hours sleep, at most, between rest stops and fidgety neighbour. Chicago's West Side at 5am doesn't look much fun, so I opt for a coffee in the terminal building.

6am. It's now Early Morning rather than Late Night so I make a dash for the metro. Exact change only, and the closest I've got is $20. Decide to walk into town. Pick up a free paper and look for somewhere to get breakfast. The only places that never sleep in this city are Subway and Dunkin Donuts - opt for Dunkin, get a large coffee and two plastic donuts. The paper says that Joan Armatrading is playing tonight. Hmm.

7am. Head for the Hostel to drop off my bags. Check-in is 3pm, so I've got some time to kill. Bum around the hostel for an hour, and find directions for the nearest supermarket. A 20 minute walk, which will do me good...

8am. Wander aimlessly, semi-consciously, round the supermarket - putting things into my basket, taking them out again. In the end I buy 3 bananas, 8 oranges, 3 peaches, four yoghurts, a bag of mixed nuts, 10 sachets of oatmeal, 20 cereal bars and a new pen. Decide to get some ham too. But it's all in ounces. Er... "can I have 10 ounces please". "You want six slices?" "No, 10 ounces." "Six slices?" "Ok, six slices." [She cuts and weighs them.] "How much is that?" "Five ounces." "Ok.... can I have six more slices please..." and so it goes on.

9am. Tourist info should be open now, so head there. The lovely folk give me a map and cover it in complicated arrows and directions. They finish by saying that there's a free tour on the Loop (an Elevated Train that runs round central Chicago) starting at 10am. I can get tickets Over There. I get some tickets, and they tell me to come back in 10 minutes. In the meantime, I can watch the US Rubik's Cube Championship next door. I'm not joking - mostly young children and teenagers, whose hands move faster than I can see. I film one kid complete it in 14.9 seconds. Most of them have "Linux" or "Google" t-shirts.

10am. I spent too long watching the Rubik's Cubes and miss the tour party leave. Run to the Loop and meet them there. Spend the next hour going round the Loop (three times) being told about Chicago architecture. Very interesting.

11am. Back at Tourist Info for my next challenge. There's a Puerto Rican parade starting at midday up the road, if I hurry I can get a good view. I walk to the route and sit down. I've still got all my shopping. Eat one banana, one orange, a peach, a yoghurt and a cereal bar. The "parade" is depressing - mostly a recruiting advert for the military (first the army, then the marines, then the national guard, then navy) followed by cars telling you to buy things. Ronald McDonald comes past in a giant shoe with "me encanta" ("I love it") written on the side. I head back to the hostel.

1pm. They won't check me in, so I go to the library to use the internet and think about where next. My tentative plan is to take a train to Denver, hire a car for a few days and explore the US Rockies, then take either a train or plane to Seattle, then on to Vancouver to meet Caroline and Mark, then join a tour of the Canadian Rockies. Need to sleep on it.

2pm. Finally check in. Shower, brush my teeth, cook some food.

5pm. Decide to explore Chicago - starting at Berghoff bar, then Miller's Pub, then Billy Goat Tavern. Remember that Joan Armatrading is playing...

8pm. House of Blues, get tickets for Joan Armatrading. Absolutely brilliant (but not allowed to take photos - so this has been my thousand words to make up for the missing picture). Feels a bit weird that I'm watching an English blues singer in Chicago, at a bar part owned by Dan Ackroyd. Less than four weeks ago I was sitting beside John Belushi's grave.

1am. Back at the hostel, writing this. Time for bed.

My top tip: Coffee
What I'm listening to: Um...
Where next: Bed

By for now.

I remember...

2007-06-13T16:22:00.001+01:00

Hello! It's been too long... It's not that I've nothing to say, more that I'm not sure where to start. So (if anyone's still checking this page) I'll start where I finished last time. I made my flight, feeling slightly the worse for wear, and walked into a hot, sticky, French-speaking Montreal. Three days there, then a couple in Quebec city, a few more in Ottawa and now Toronto.

Montreal didn't start well. Hungover and tired, I thought maybe they were speaking French just to spite me. But it turns out they speak French to each other as well. So just like France - a bit surly, food's not as good as they think, people still listen to soft rock, everything shuts early (or when they feel like it). And that was pretty much how I spent the first day. The next day it rained. But I did see some more old stuff, found a few nice bars, and found out a bit more about Montreal. And on the third day I decided to go to a zoo and then to the archaeology museum and then to some more bars. Maybe Montreal is ok.

But it was in Quebec City that things started to click. It's an amazing city - apparently the only city in North America with its original fortifications (apart from Mexico), home of the Quebec Parliament and spiritual home of the Quebec "nation". I think I'd been too quick to call it French - it's about as much French as the Americans are English. It's Quebec. And if you go far enough back, it's Canada - before 1713, most of what's now Canada was (in theory at least) part of France. In 1713 they ceded Nova Scotia (complete with 12,000 'Acadian' farmers) to Britain - prompting the British, in one of its finer hours of empire, to evict most of them - and in 1759/60 they lost the lot in a short, one-sided war. What followed was effectively a recolonisation, firstly by British and Irish (protestant) merchants and aristocrats, and later by Irish (catholic) settlers, effectively refugees from the famines of the 19th century. For a time, the colony of Lower Canada (as it was known) was minority French. And even now they reckon that maybe 40% of Quebecois have Irish ancestors.

This is all reflected in the Quebecois parliament, which repeats throughout the three phases of Quebe:- French colony, British colony, Canadian province. To emphasise this the architect inscribed "je me souviens" ("I remember"). This became the official motto for the province and ironically, for some, has gone one to mean something else entirely - a kind of "never forget" that Quebec was once part of France and (almost) self-governing.

So Quebec was complicated. Strong echoes of France (the food, language, architecture), echoes of Irish (the music - they're well into their folk, which is basically Irish music in French), and even some of Britain (the system of government, sport... not much else...) I entered Quebec thinking of it as "French Canada", but I left with no clue what to call it - Francophone, Quebecois, maybe just another bit of Canada. But I do find it a bit weird that Montreal, the second largest French speaking city in the world behind Paris, has Queen Elizabeth as head of state.

And so on to Ottowa. Not much to say really - some cool parliament buildings and stuff, nice river, good Museum of Civilisation. But not much else going on - a bit like a worse version of Washington. The youth hostel was great (an old prison, and the site of the last public hanging in Canada) but after two days I busted a move to Toronto - which is a basically a huge, North American city with a big tower that you can go up and lots of skyscrapers. Both cities are in the province of Ontario, which is the most populous in Canada and a lot more like the Canada off the telly (Anglophone, safe, laid back, friendly, but still no mounties). But I think what's struck me most is that this is just a part of Canada - albeit the biggest, richest and loudest. Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Quebec, Ontario... take your pick.

My top tip: Take ferries; they're like cheap cruises. I went out to Toronto islands (which are great) today for the equivalent of three pounds return, great views of the harbour; in Boston you get unlimited travel on the harbour taxis included in a day travel pass; in Quebec you can take the ferry across the St Lawrence River to Nevis for less than a pint.
What I'm listening to: Nothing. I spent a day fretting that I'd lost my MP3 player (what'd I do then?) but then I found it wrapped up inside my tent. Phew.
Where next: Niagara falls!! I'm jumping over the edge in a barrel. Apparently only 13 people have ever tried it (only eight were successful).

PS - loads more photos online...

Lost and Found

2007-06-04T13:55:00.000+01:00

Writing from St John's, Newfoundland (pronounced Newf'nLAND) - supposedly the oldest English overseas settlement and the most easterly point in the US. But mostly it's just cold. Very, very cold.

After Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, I met up with a guy from Western Canada and took the overnight ferry to Newfee. Two days and 550 miles later I got to St John's. Hitch-hiking, it turns out, is a great way to meet people but not the quickest way to travel. I guess the distance would be like hitching from London to Aberdeen. But I did find out lots of stuff about the island - mostly about moose and the weather (obsessions here), or about the price of "gas". And then more about the weather.

The island's about the size of Iceland, with about the same population and probably the same sort of set-up - lots of ex-fishing communities (which have collapsed now, sadly), some mining, and a lot of people looking for work. Most have left to join the oil rush in Alberta (I met some people on the road who worked up there) but there's enough folk here in St John's - which is a nice little place and, I think, the closest I'll be to home for the next year.

Did I mention the cold? Saw four icebergs in the harbour yesterday and loads of floating ice. Anyway got to run as I'm getting a cab to the airport. The choice was between a bus, ferry, bus and train for $300 (two days) or flying for the same price (two hours). Next stop Montreal.

Sorry if this is a bit incoherent, bit of a hangover.

Bye for now.

Blame Canada

2007-05-27T22:35:00.000+01:00

So after 19 days I finally left the Great Satan and am a subject of Her Majesty again. Phew. Nova Scotia is great - it's like it borrows from the US, UK, and Ireland but copies none. It feels more British than American, more Irish than Boston. But unlike Boston I've not seen a single Irish flag. It doesn't need to say it's Irish (or Celtic), it just is. All the pubs have live music, people sit in the corner with a fiddle or a guitar, and they drink (a lot). Lots of Union flags and statues of Churchill and soldiers too. I expect there's probably an Orange lodge round here somewhere as well.

Jane and David (my brother) are here too, on the last leg of a few weeks in Quebec and the Maritimes. We're about to go for something to eat so will leave it at that. I'm conscious that I've not been very good at saying what I've actually been doing (like watching whales, or seeing old stuff, or sitting on buses, or cycling round battlefields) but maybe when I've got more time I will. If it's not too tedious.

My top tip: Come to Halifax! There's a lot of work here too, come for a summer.
What I'm listening to: Orbital on the Boston subway was good fun. Middle of Knowhere album.
Where next: Going to try to get to Newfoundland...

Where everybody knows your name

2007-05-24T03:05:00.000+01:00

In Boston, nice place. I've not visited the Cheers bar yet but I have been getting into my baseball (surprise surprise) and seeing more old stuff. Apparently Boston got rich because of "Puritan work ethic" and definitely not the slave trade. Hmmm. It's also the real birthplace of the nation (sorry, Philadelphia).

Anyway want to watch James Earl Jones read part of a children's story? Well now you can, here. It's not very good but as the great man said, "I find your lack of faith disturbing."

DWPoo

2007-05-22T02:59:00.000+01:00

I've just found out that DWP (my old/ current employer) won't allow people to view my pictures. Boo. So here are some of my favourites:

This is a cool photo of a space shuttle thing from the National Air and Space Museum in Washington:

This is some weird Indian statue from the Museum of the Native American Indian:

Watch the birdie in this one:

This is the "whoosh" photo:

This one also whooshes:

Here's Rusty's Hard Time Hollow, maybe the best place I've ever stayed (check the flags!):

This is a cool photo (complete fluke too):

And this is from Atlantic City, although I doubt most of the slot-jockeys have seen it:

And here's one of me, in Philly (can't you tell):

All of this photo action has broken the computer in Martha's Vineyard hostel, so will leave it at that. Very nice few days here, walking, cycling and seeing John Belushi's grave - "I may be gone but rock n' roll lives on". Bye for now.

Big things

2007-05-18T22:03:00.000+01:00

1. Cars. The car should be taller than you. It should be too big to park and too big to stop when approaching smaller cars.

2. Camping. If you can't walk into your tent then it's too small. If you don't have a fridge and TV then you're not really camping. The Wild Frontier has been tamed. And supersized.

3. Bridges. Chesapeake Bay Bridge is very very long.

4. Wilderness. The parks are cool, the sunsets amazing.

5. Distances. Obviously. I thought I was prepared for it, but I think this is only about the second time this week that I've stood still.

6. Culture. Surprising, but loads of places (particularly in New England) have reinvented themselves as cultural oases. Last night I was watching Senegalese drummers tearing up a parking lot outside a warehouse in Hartford, CT, today I was walking round the Dr Seuss National Memorial Garden in Springfield, MA. And there are museums for everything (Early American Farm Implements, anyone?)

7. History. History is big over here. They have less of it but make so much more. Everywhere has a claim - Washington has appropriated all the cool stuff. Charlottesville claims ownership of Jefferson. Williamsburg and Jamestown say history began in 1607 and its best years were the first hundred. Philadelphia says it began in 1776. And they claim Franklin. Connecticut says it had the first Constitution (and some founding fathers of its own). Everyone thinks George Washington was one of theirs, but tend not to dwell on the slavery (except when euphemistically referring to the founders "battling with the contradictions of the day"). I expect Boston will say it all began in 1620.

The results can be overwhelming, and confusing. There are tours, audio guides, plaques, museums, reconstructions everywhere. And context and sequencing gets lost - so Ricky Skaggs tells a bemused crowd in Jamestown that the 1607 colonists came "to practice their religions and worship freely", when in fact they came to make as much money as possible (the religion stuff came later). But it can be enlightening (the Quakers were cool) and impressive - young kids here know it all back to front, and (it seems) people here have a much stronger connection with their story than we do.

[Where would we start? "Hastings: The birth of an aristocracy." "1215: Let freedom reign (a bit)." "1649: Let Puritans reign (for a while)" ... and I didn't really do any history after this point so not sure what happened next - which is kind of my point.]

8. The future. According to Gary Younge (a very enjoyable book), the US is the only country in the world where people consistently say that the next year will be better than the last.

9. Welcomes. I know it's a cliche, but folk here are so friendly. My new pals Ali and Corey took me over to Springfield today and I'm sat in Ali's front room now using her internet. Last night Jordan took me to her husband John's bar. Last week four people in Philly took me out then bought me cheesesteak. And it's not because I'm a gregarious person (most of you know I'm a miserable git.) I'm not sure I've even said hello to a tourist in London.

10. Poverty. It's tragic really. I don't think I've ever seen such abject poverty in a developed country and I'm sure it's got worse since the last time I was here. I must've counted 50 homeless people in Philly in one day. I lost count in Washington. Maybe 20 in the few hours I was in Atlantic City. Something has gone seriously wrong - I think it's all about solidarity and the welfare system, but I would say that wouldn't I.

11. Vices. Standing in Trump Towers, Atlantic City, you wouldn't know it was daytime outside or that the oldest boardwalk in the US and then the Atlantic Ocean are a stone's throw. The beach there was a lonely, desolate place - Trumptown has torn the heart out of the city (Cape May, by comparison, without the casinos, is a beautiful "Victorian" Harbour town).

So those are my superficial observations, but since someone challenged me in Williamsburg to explain what I like about the US, I think they're the best I can do. I love the connection with the past and optimism about the future but hate the failure, or inability, to sort out the present. Cognitive dissonance.

Anyway. In other news, I've got my photos online. There are loads, but take the time to look at them - I've put titles on the cool or interesting ones (you need to scroll through a few pages on some of them). Ben asked to see the blue ridge mountains - here they are:

Top tip: Email me! Is anyone reading this? What's happening in the world? Let me know!
What I'm listening to today: Super Furry Animals
Where next: Martha's Vineyard for a few days, then up to Boston

I'm back!

2007-05-13T18:46:00.000+01:00

Last night I fell asleep watching Gordon Brown dry paint on C-SPAN. When I woke up he'd turned into the Reverend Al Sharpton. Much more entertaining.

Don't know where to start really, been a long few days...

Maybe hiking 22 miles along the Appalachian trail in the Blue Ridge Mountains (they really are blue) with a fellow-traveller from Oz called George.
Or Rusty's "Hard Time Hollow" - a shelter for "Trail Walkers" where the food, bed and board is all yours for a donation (and help fixing the chimney) and where the hospitality comes southern style: first thing he asked was whether we'd seen Deliverance, then put it on especially for us that night.
Or hitch-hiking the 40 miles back to Charlottesville, first with some tourists along the Blue Ridge Parkway (one of them asked me what I thought of Tony Blair, I think they wish now they hadn't) and then with the Master Sous Chef from Charlottesville country club.
Or "America's 400th Anniversary" here in Williamsburg, with Ricky Skaggs and Bruce Hornsby doing a bluegrass cover of "Superfreak" (cold, cold murder).

Virginia is an amazing, intoxicating, confusing place. Maybe all of the south is. I'm not sure that I've ever met people as warm and friendly, and yet walking round the Williamsburg festival wearing my "I AM A EUROPEAN" t-shirt drew me really funny looks. And for all that hospitality, I'm slap in the middle of the old plantations and you can feel the undercurrents. A museum here talks about "a nation coming to terms with its past" and I doubt there's anywhere that that's more true.

Before that I was in Washington. That was nice too.

Here's what I've learnt this week:

- American streets are very very long, don't try to walk to number 4510
- Queeny is following me around (and is more popular than me)
- "The Brits" burnt down Washington then ate the First Lady's dinner (there was a long pause after the guy (a policeman) told me this - wasn't sure what to say, but I think "well, arson's hungry work" wasn't the right response)
- 90% of Native Americans died, mostly of disease, in the 150 years post-Contact
- Religious freedom had its limits. The 1882 Indian Religious Crimes Code punished native Americans for practicing their religions and led to sacred objects being forcibly removed. Most ended up in private hands or museums. The Code lasted 50 years but it took til the 1978 Native American Religious Freedom Act for native religions to get full recognition (a 1994 amendment to that Act "guarantees" the use of peyote for religious rituals - not sure what "guarantee" means in this context, money back?)
- Jet planes and space-ships are more fun than mocassins. I've some great photos from the Air and Space Museum - one day I'll get to a computer that lets me upload them.
- The Car is King and nobody walks anywhere ever. In "Colonial Williamsburg" they've reconstructed the town as it may have looked in the 17th century, complete with (badly) cobbled streets, but left the tarmac roads intact. They should dirt them over and force people to get out and walk (or have their cars towed by pony).
- Al Gore is going to win in 2008, apparently.
- DO NOT THINK in museums or at events. They will explain what you see and how you should think about it. You don't need to imagine, speculate or wonder.

Top tip: Get some bluegrass (e.g. Ricky Skaggs). It's like celtic folk meets American folk meets country and blues. Brilliant.
What's am I listening to today: The Smiths (partic What Time is Now)
Where next: Hiring a car then up the east coast through Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey to Philly.

Sorry this is so long - will work on saying more with less...

Touchdown!

2007-05-08T02:09:00.000+01:00

As they say in America. It's a beautiful day in the nation's capital.

Decided to do some spy research this afternoon at the International Spy Museum. Here's what I found out:

Shoe with Heel Transmitter. Secretly obtaining an American diplomat's shoes, the Romanians outfitted them with a hidden microphone and transmitter, thus enabling them to monitor the conversations of their unsuspecting target.

Rectal tool kit. Filled with escape tools, this kit could be stashed inside the body where it would not be found during a search.

Microdots. Agents could make microdots from common household items such as headache powder, vodka and cellophane from packets of cigarettes.

Weapons. Bobbin, British Special Forces 1939-1945.

"No-one is given rewards as rich as those given to spies, and no matter is more secret than espionage." Sun Tzu, The Art of War

"Uncle Sam likes to know what you have on film."

I Spy!

Can you see what I see?

2007-05-03T17:39:00.000+01:00

I think I've got the photo thing figured out. I've put some here and some here. They're not very exciting, but they're a start.

Elsewhere it turns out that the Queen is copying me (not for the first time).

[I particularly liked this quote - who says American journalism is lazy: "The visit, which will be Elizabeth's fifth to the United States as queen, is being widely anticipated partly because it could be her last, though she remains healthy."]

My visit to Virginia and Washington will be in a lower key. And I'll be staying for the voice of Darth Vader and progressive bluegrass.

Just five days to go...

If you go down to the woods today...

2007-04-30T16:59:00.000+01:00

You won't find me there, not after last week. Although I did meet Ray Mears. Unbelievably, he tramps round the countryside with a chip van that's always just out of shot. And has a team of (First Nation) people who pick up his discarded wrappers and chip forks. But apart from that he's exactly like he is on the telly - top bloke.

Eight things I've learnt this week:

- Drinking dirty water is bad
- Beech leaves taste a bit like lettuce
- Some trees are poisonous
- I'm not very good at carving spoons
- I'm slightly better at carving tent pegs
- It's a bit pointless to carve things that you can buy really cheap, light and easy to carry versions of (like spoons and tent pegs)
- Making fire with a cigarette lighter is easier than rubbing two bits of wood together
- Ray Mears is really really nice

I'm figuring out how to put pictures on the infoweb so before long you'll be able to look at mine, rather than just links to other people's. But it may take some time.

See you anon.

mr bushcraft

Goodbye, Mr Chips

2007-04-20T14:15:00.000+01:00

Never seen the film, but I've always been a fan of his work. You just say what you see.

The post-it on my desk says zero, the clock says 1417.

I've got the last day blues...

So what is the ultraworld?

2007-04-19T01:19:00.000+01:00

I think it's the sense that you're still on a boat two days after you've come back to dry land. Or the hollow feeling when the festival ends and the lights come up...

I will adventure beyond the ultraworld.

Or I might just go back here.

Hasta luego.

How Exciting

2007-04-12T14:18:00.000+01:00

My first foray into the brave world of blogging. In time, this page will document my adventures beyond the ultraworld. But for the timebeing, it's just me and my new blog.

Um... nice weather, no?